64 TRIANDRIA-MONOGYNIA. Eleocharis. 



Water plants with simple leafless stems, sheathed at the 

 base, and a solitary, terminal, erect, leafless spike. 



1. E. palustris. Creeping Spike-rush. 



Stem round. Hoot creeping. Stigmas two. Seed lenti- 

 cular, most convex at one side. 



Scirpus palustris. Linn. Sp. PI. 70. Willd. v. 1 .29 1 . Vahl Enum. 



r.2.247. Fl. Br. 48. Engl. Bot.v.2. t.\3\. Rel.Rudb.27. 



/. 2. Don H. Br. 126. Hook. Scot. 18. FL Dan. t. 273. Poit. 



$ Turp.Par. L59. Leers 10. t. I./.3. Schrad. Germ. v. 1. 127. 



Wahlenb. Lapp. 14. 

 S. n. 1336. Hall. Hist. v. 2.177. 



S. equiseti capitulo majo-ri. Rati Syn. 429. Scheuchz. Agr. 360. 

 Juncus equiseti capitulis. Bauh. Theatr. 186./. 

 J. minor, capitulis equiseti. Ger. Em. 35. f. 1631. 

 Juncellus cyperoides, capitulo simplici. Loes. Pruss. 131. L 36. 



In ditches, rivulets, and boggy ground, very common. 



Perennial. June, July. 



The root sends out horizontal runners, which fix themselves here 

 and there by fibrous radicles. Stems many together, erect, as 

 thick as a crow's quill, smooth, from 6 to 12 inches high, each 

 invested at the base with 2 or 3 tight, entire, cylindrical, reddish 

 sheaths. Leaves none. Spike ovate-oblong, acute, half an inch 

 long. Glumes brown, bluntly keeled, acute, encompassed with 

 a pale membranous border, and a little expanded while in flower. 

 Stam. 3, capillary. Anth. linear, buff-coloured, loosely spread- 

 ing. Germ, ovate. Stigmas certainly but 2, downy, spreading, the 

 length of the style, whose base is greatly dilated, and ovate, but 

 its point of attachment with the germen is not thicker than the 

 upper part of the style. Seed yellow, polished, roundish-obovate, 

 tumid at each side, but most on that next the glume, crowned 

 by the brown, wrinkled, compressed, permanent, unpolished base 

 of the style, and subtended by from 3 to 5 bristles, about its 

 own length, rough with deflexed teeth. Three stigmas are very 

 erroneously represented, in Engl. Bot. this species not being- 

 then well distinguished from the following. 



2. E. multicaulis. Many-stalked Spike-rush. 



Stem round. Root fibrous. Stigmas three. Seed acutely 

 triangular, as well as the permanent base of the style. 



Scirpus multicaulis. Fl. Br. 48. Engl. Bot. v. 17. L\ 187. Don 

 H. Br. 128. Vahl Enum. v. 2. 246. Schrad. Germ. v. 1 . 128. 



S. palustris (3, minor. Wahlenb. Lapp. 14. Hook. Scot. 18. Linn. 

 Fl. Lapp. ed. 2. 1 6. 



S. t. 167. FL Dan. See the remarks to t. 287 of that work. 



S. multicaulis, equiseti capitulis minoribus. Rel. Rudb. 28./. 2. 



