41 



THE BRITISH CAREX FRIGIDA. 

 By Edward F. Linton, M.A. 



(Plate 382 a.) 



In Mr. Arthur Bennett's valuable paper on Carex in this Journal 

 (1897, 259), I hoped to see some remarks on C.frlgida AIL, which 

 was inserted in our British list some twenty-three years ago (see 

 Journ. Bot. 1874, 339) ; and as this species is passed over in silence, 

 I venture to place on record the result of my investigation into the 

 Scottish plant. It is somewhat remarkable that no one has suc- 

 ceeded with any certainty, since the late John Sadler's discovery in 

 1874, in gathering Allioni's plant, though Sadler reported it as 

 growing in considerable quantity at one spot, and very conspicuous; 

 the plants supposed to be it by different collectors having, I believe, 

 usually been relegated to a form of C. binervis Sm. I gathered such 

 a plant once above Loch Wharral, Forfarshire, where it was growing 

 on a very steep wet rocky slope together with type C. binervis Sm. ; 

 it appeared to be identical with specimens cultivated from Mr. 

 Sadler's plant and circulated by Dr. Boswell-Syme, but was named 

 '•narrow-fruited C. binervis'' by Mr. Arthur Bennett. I have had 

 in cultivation the Scotch Cfrigida from the late Dr. F. B. White 

 and also from the Edinburgh lioyal Botanic Gardens ; this latter 

 (perhaps the former also) is identical with Boswell-Syme's plant, 

 and is no doubt one of Sadler's original roots. It was not till last 

 summer that I saw one of Sadler's own specimens, and satisfied 

 myself that Boswell-Syme's plant and that from the Edinburgh 

 Botanic Gardens were identical with it. I can now take these as 

 the basis of the following comparison, and will call it C. frigid a 

 Syme for the purposes of this paper. 



The plants of C. frigida Syme in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens 

 had become after fourteen or fifteen years a large dense tuft, 

 evidently having no elongate stolons. In my own garden, after 

 about seven years' cultivation, the plant is similarly close-set, 

 having sent out no new rhizome this summer as much as half 

 an inch long ; proving in fact to be tufted, not stoloniferous. 

 C. frigida All. is described by Koch as '^radice stolonifera," and by 

 Dr. P. Morthier as having " soiiche stolonifere rampante" ; and many 

 specimens in my own herbarium and a fine series lent me by Mr. 

 Charles Bailey testify to its having a creeping root with distinct 

 stolons ; the specimens show them from one to three inches in 

 length. 



Passing by two or three minor points which appeal to the eye, 

 but look unsatisfactory on paper, e.g. the lower leaf-sheaths, I take 

 next the male spikelet, which in C. frigida Syme has the glume 

 obovate-oblong and generally obtuse or rounded, varying to sub- 

 acute in the upper part of some of the spikelets. The glumes of 

 the male spikelet in C. frigida All. are of a darker brown colour, 

 lanceolate in shape, gradually acuminate, usually acute, though 



Journal of Botany. — Vol. 3G. [Feb. 1898.] e 



