ENGELMANN — NORTH AM. SPECIES OP JUNCUS. 457 



is it, then, at all probable that Meyer himself should have 

 done so in his own herbarium? His original specimens 

 may not have exhibited the foliaceous excrescences, so that 

 he could not mention them in his description of this species, 

 while he did allude to similar ones in his account of his J. pa- 

 radoxus; his diagnosis is so short that he does not even 

 mention the unusually small number of flowers. 



The rhizoma is whitish and slender, often almost filiform, 

 and sends out few and distant, or sometimes more crowded, 

 slender and almost terete, not flattened, stems, 4 or 6 to 18 or 

 20 inches high ; leaves slender, almost setaceous, scarcely 

 compressed, and incompletely knotted. The panicle shows 

 very different forms in different specimens; sometimes, prob- 

 ably in the earlier part of the season, it is only 2 or 3 inches 

 long, and moderately spreading, with flowers more crowded; 

 but usually, at least in the numerous herbarium specimens 

 examined by me, and perhaps later in the season, it attains a 

 length of 4 or 6 inches, with about the same diameter, the 

 few slender spreading or recurved branches bearing the dis- 

 tant flowers on one side. The flowers are green, with a 

 reddish tinge, especially on the inner sepals, usually 1.0-1.3 

 lines long, and generally single; sepals obtuse, sometimes 

 mucronate, or, rarely, the outer ones acutish ; these are gene- 

 rally shorter than the inner ones; but in a Lake Superior 

 specimen the flowers are only 0.8 line long, and all the sepals 

 equal, broadly oval and obtuse. Stamens about the length 

 of the outer sepals, anthers always longer than filaments, 

 sometimes scarcely twice as long, in others fully four times 

 their length. Style shorter than the acuminate ovary. The 

 capsule ought not to have been described as Meyer and 

 (copying him) La Harpe did, as triquetro-ovata mucronata; 

 it is rather, as Gray has it, taper beaked, and is completely 

 one-celled, the lateral placenta; occupying only the lowest 

 third or fourth part of the commissure of the valves. Seeds 

 0.25 line long, delicately but distinctly reticulate, arece trans- 

 versely lineolate. 



I cannot distinguish Dr. Chapman's J. abortivus from the 

 northern plant except by the not essential characters given 

 above ; the flowers are absolutely identical, and fruit I have 

 not seen. 



With some hesitation I add J. subtilis as a procumbent or 

 floating variety with short internodes, and short leaves which 

 bear leaf-buds in their axils. In American collections this 

 form does not seem to exist, but La Harpe, who saw it in 

 Michaux's herbarium in Paris, gives a full description of it, 

 from which I have extracted above ; the flowers are described 

 exactly like those of J. pelocarpus, and there is, notwithstand- 

 ing the different habit, nothing in it that would specifically 

 distinguish it, except the smaller number of stamens, and the 



