128 The Botanical Gazette. [ Ma y> 



ty. This and the two stations for Minnesota are the only 

 ones concerning which I have definite information for the 

 Upper Mississippi and the Upper Lakes within the bounds of 

 the United States. P. Spirillus is a common plant in some 

 of the small lakes of western New York. Those I have seen 

 there were generally furnished with v/ell developed floating 

 leaves. In the few specimens seen in Chesago Lake, the 

 floating leaves were rare, the plants being almost always en- 

 tirely submersed. It probably occurs in other parts of the 

 lake, but time was lacking for a thorough search. My experi- 

 ence shows that the habitat assigned to this plant in Gray's 

 Manual is too exclusive in character. I have heretofore found 

 it in small lakes, not in streams. It grows along the shallow 

 margins of these lakes, taking the shelving beach from where 

 the water is about a foot and a half in depth to where it shal- 

 lows to three or four inches. In the latter situations it may 

 be left bare of water for a time when the winds blow off shore. 

 Under such conditions it grows in tuft-like masses, with short 

 and very leafy stems, being little more than a bunch of leaves. 

 Some of the plants of the shore were of considerable inter- 

 est. Sagittaria hcterophylla Pursh bore stamens the length 

 of whose filaments allied it to the section containing S. vari- 

 abilis more than to that containing S. heterophylla. They 

 were two or three times as long as the anthers, but had a 

 lance-ovate, very glandular base. Some of the leaves were 

 sagittate with narrow appendages. The beaks of the fruit 

 were turned to one side, and could hardly be called erect. 

 Juncus pclocarpus K. Meyer grew in the wet sands of the 

 shore. Cypcrus Engelmanni Steud. had spikelets consider- 

 ably flattened, or quite far from terete. Hemicarpha sub- 

 squamosa Nees, generally but an inch or two high, was 

 abundant in some places. Its scales were barely recurved at 

 the point. Nearly all of the culms bore one or two small ad- 

 ditional involucral leaves. 



The most interesting plant of the wet shores was Scirpus 

 dcbihs \ ursh. Its flowers were uniformly characterized by 

 two stamens, no exceptions being found as far as they were 

 examined, and this extended far enough to establish the fact 

 as a rule. The style was two-cleft, and all the bristles usu- 

 ally longer than the achenium. This was somewhat plano- 

 convex, broadly obovate, thick, rugulose, shining, from dark 

 brown to black in color. The stems were convex on one side 



