142 THE JOURNAL OF BOTANY 



Link " ; he " also met with it, in 1904, near Costobelle, Alpes 

 Maritimes." This Departmental name was obviously a slip for 

 that of the Var, Costebelle being a hihy pine-clad district south of 

 Hyeres, visited by Mr. Druce, where are several good hotels. 



Whatever C. basilaris of Jordan may be, and doubtless Kiiken- 

 thal is right, some of the French botanists reduce it to C. depressa, 

 though Kouy makes it a distinct species, and Arcangeh considered 

 it a variety of C. Halleriana x\sso (Syn. p. 133, 1779). It is 

 recorded from only one station in the Var by Albert and Jahandiez 

 (Cat. des Plantes Vase, du Var, 1908), and that in the Esterel (ex 

 Bull. Soc. hot. France, xxx, p. 152) ; nor is it reported from les 

 lies d'Hyeres. The habitat given is " hois frais " in the Esterel 

 and near Menton, etc., in Alpes Marit. (Ardoino, Kouy and 

 others) ; and according to Bicknell {Flora of Bordighera) it is 

 "rare under the chestnuts between the Ceriana and Taggia 

 valleys " in Liguria. Therefore C. basilaris is not a plant I 

 should expect to see about Costebelle, whereas the closely allied and 

 very similar C. Halleriana Asso (C gynobasis Vill.) is frequent in 

 those regions among the pinewoods on arid, stony ground, as it is 

 throughout the South ; and Mr. Bucknall has shown me specimens 

 from Costebelle itself. 



To add to the confusion, Mons. Burnat did not include 

 C. basilaris in his list of 64 Carices found in les Alpes Maritimes, 

 including the range of mountains known by that name, which he 

 showed me in October, 1907. It would be interesting if Mr. Druce 

 could confirm his Costebelle record of this rare and little under- 

 stood plant — a record evidently overlooked in France. It seems 

 to differ from C. Halleriana chiefly in the long cuspidate glume 

 of the fruiting spikelet, in which respect it resembles the allied 

 C. ambigua Link. 



Eouy points out that in addition to C. Halleriana two other 

 species usually have "pedoncules basilaires," viz. C. depressa Link 

 and C. basilaris Jordan ; and that some dozen other Carices have 

 " accidentellement pedoncules + gynobasiques." In C. basilaris 

 the glumes in the male spikelet are lanceolate, acute; the female 

 spikelets are 15-20-flowered, elhpsoid, and the glumes obovate, 

 inarkedly cuspidate; the fruit feebly trigonous, 3-3|^ mm. long. 

 In C. Halleriana the lower glumes in the male spikelet are 

 obtuse ; the female spikelets are ovoid or subglobular, loose, and 

 few-floivered (2-10 in our specimens), and the glumes are shorter 

 than the utricle, elliptic, acuminate, whitish at the border in the 

 upper half and on the keel; the fruit is clearly trigonous, 4-5 mm. 

 long, strongly nerved, and fawn-coloured. 



According to Kouy {Flore de France, xiii, p. 441, 1912), G. 

 depressa is found only in the Pyrenees and Portugal ; and G. basi- 

 laris occurs in les Alpes Maritimes, the Var (Col du Lentisque in 

 the Esterel), Corsica, near Bonifacio, southern Spain (Mr. Druce's 

 record from Catalonia is overlooked), Liguria, Morocco, and 

 Algeria. C. Halleriana has a milch wider range in Europe, 

 western Asia, Africa, and N. America. 



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