ENGELMANN — NORTH AM. SPECIES OF JUNCUS. 487 



number of species were sent by Messrs. Bolander and Kel- 

 logg of California, Ravenel of South Carolina, and Bigelow of 

 Michigan, and after them by Messrs. Porter and Smith of 

 Pennsylvania and Chapman of Florida. My own and the 

 whole botanical fraternity's acknowledgments are due to all 

 of them. 



The 99 numbers comprise 38 different species — among 

 them 10 described here for the first time and 12 very rare or 

 critical ones — and 20 important varieties; the balance con- 

 sist of minor varieties, different forms of the same species or 

 variety, and in a few instances the same plant from different 

 localities. The specimens are not all of equal value or beau- 

 ty, in some few instances they are inferior, or the different 

 specimens of the same number are sometimes not sufficiently 

 homogeneous for a collection that claims to be a standard 

 one ; but on the whole they will be found satisfactory, and 

 many of them very perfect and better and more complete 

 than they can be found in most herbaria. If my friends or 

 the friends of botany in this country will undertake the labor 

 of collecting and sending me specimens of the Junci not at 

 all or only incompletely represented in the Herbarium Nor- 

 male, I will cheerfully promise to do my best to arrange and 

 distribute them in the same manner as in the present collec- 

 tion. I would, in this case, urge the importance of getting 

 not only those species that are wanting in the Herb. Norm., 

 but especially the intermediate and doubtful forms, that con- 

 nect the different forms of such polymorphous species as J. 

 scirpoides or J. Canadensis and similar ones. 



ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. 



Pag. 425. Among the vegetative organs, the rootstock (not 

 root-stalk, as misprinted) has been barely mentioned, while it 

 is a most important organ and exhibits many differences in the 

 different species of perennial Junci. Very few of our species 

 are annuals, and these all belong to the section graniinifolii : 

 J. bufonius, triformis, Kelloggii, and, I believe, repens. The 

 others bring forth buds from the axils of the lowest scaly 

 leaves (Niederblaetter) at or soon after the period of flower- 

 ing, and especially at the time the fruit ripens, in the form of 

 short leaf-buds or stolons or horizontal rhizomas, which pre- 

 serve the existence of the plant through winter while the old 

 stock is decaying, and in the following season produce the 

 new flowering stalks and die themselves in the succeeding 

 summer or fall when their successors are forming, so that the 

 living part of the plant never gets more than a year old ; but 

 in most species the rhizoma, otten bearing the vestiges of the 

 decayed flowering steins, continues to exist much longer, at- 



