CAREX MOXTAXA 275 



Those unacquainted with this sedge, who may look for it after 

 the seeds have fallen at Midsummer, may detect it by its bright, 

 narrow, very slender, and pointed leaves, 4-8 inches long, or rarely 

 longer ; and make sure of the species by its thick shaggy branched 

 I'hizome to which the fibrous roots are attached. The basal sheaths 

 of the leaves are often reddish purple, as in C. depawperaia^ a very 

 rare and quite di:fferent species, which holds its ground in one spot 

 a few miles from Charterhouse, N. Somerset. In early spring before 

 the flowers are out and when the young leaves of C. moiitana are 

 quite short, and surrounded by last year's dead ones, botanists should 

 search for the erect flowering spikes, which are black before the anthers 

 appear at the end of April. The stems soon elongate and Anally 

 droop in crraceful curves, so that the flowers are often hidden in the 

 mass of leaves. At the end of April 1917 I saw at Charterhouse on 

 Mendip hundreds of these little black spikes, two or three inches high, 

 appearing immediately after the snow melted after that bitter Avinter. 



I am of the opinion that Carex montana had been overlooked on 

 Mendip until 1890 chiefl}" because its flowers and fruits disappear 

 soon after Midsummer, and because many plants have no flowers. 

 Perhaps for similar reasons I actually do not remember having 

 collected it on the Continent, where so widely spread ; though imtil 

 I went to Chai'terhouse in 1915 my knowledge of the j)lant was 

 limited to having seen it growing only on shady banks in Wyre Forest 

 and in a Sussex woodland. 



Since the above was w^-itten, I find the following interesting note 

 on this plant by that careful observer the late T, R. Archei- Briggs 

 in his Flora of Plymouth (1880) p. 351 : — " One of the earliest 

 Car ices to flower. By the third week in June I have found the 

 seeds all shed and the spikes withered ; but the large j^tches foi-med 

 by its tufts of light green leaves and its thick shaggy rhizome serve, 

 when flowers and seeds are gone, to distinguish it from its associates, 

 C. pihtlifera dir\(\. C. prcecox.'' First record for Devon: Briggs, in 

 Journ. Bot. (1873), 172. 



KUBIACEJi: BATESIAN.E.— I. 



By H. F. Werxham, D.Sc, F.L.S. 



Ik this Journal for 1916 (pp. 226-231) I published descriptions 

 of several new Gamopetalse collected by Mr. G. L. Bates in the 

 Yaunde district of Southern Cameroons. most of them from the 

 neighbourhood of Bitye, Ebolowa. Mr. Bates, who has ah-eady 

 obtained a deserved reputation for the excellence and interest of his 

 collections, has recently sent to the National Herbarium about 250 

 specimens from the same district ; over 16 per cent, of these are 

 lluhiacecB^ among which are so many novelties as to claim a 

 separate record ; the interest of the remainder, from the rarity and 

 excellence of the material, is hardly less than that of the new^ species. 

 Nott'S by Mr. Bates, which I quote in inverted commas, accom])any 



