﻿610 Mackenzie: Notes on Carex 



3-6 dm. high, triangular and somewhat roughened beneath head, 

 conspicuously striate, exceeding leaves, aphyllopodic, light brown 

 at base, mostly developing and flowering same year. Leaves 

 with well-developed blades three to five to a fertile culm, 

 on lower fourth, but not bunched, the blades erect, 2-4 mm. 

 wide, mostly 1-2 dm. long, fiat, the sheaths tight, hyaline 

 ventrally, concave at orifice. Sterile shoots similar. Head 

 ovoid or oblong-ovoid, 12-25 mm. long, 10-18 mm. wide, with 

 five to ten densely aggregated but distinct gynaecandrous spikes, 

 the latter oblong-ovoid, 5-12 mm. long, 4-8 mm. wide, rounded 

 or round tapering at base and round tapering at apex, the 

 perigynia fifteen to thirty, densely arranged in many rows, 

 appressed with erect ascending tips. Lowest bract somewhat 

 prolonged, shorter than head, the others scale-like. Scales 

 ovate, obtuse or acutish, dark chestnut to brownish-black with 

 lighter poorly defined midvein and narrow hyaline margins, 

 narrower and shorter than perigynia. Perigynia ovate, 3-75-5 

 mm. long, 1.5-2 mm. wide, thin, save where distended by achene, 

 the walls membranaceous, light green or stramineous, the beak 

 strongly dark- tinged, lightly several-nerved on both faces, rounded 

 at base, strongly thin-margined, tapering into a beak half the length 

 of body, serrulate to middle, the beak hyaline-tipped, obliquely 

 cut ventrally. Achenes lenticular, obovoid, substipitate, 1.5 mm. 

 long, I mm. wide, apiculate, the slender style tardily deciduous. 

 Stigmas two. 



The type specimens of Carex f estiva Dewey were collected by 

 Richardson " at Bear Lake and on the Rocky Mountains." These 

 specimens or duplicates thereof marked as collected at Bear Lake 

 are in the Torrey herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, 

 and represent a widely distributed boreal species known from the 

 far northern regions of Canada, from Labrador, from Greenland 

 and from various far northern points in Europe. Specimens 

 which I cannot distinguish also come from the extreme southern 

 part of South America, and associated with them is the name 

 Carex macloviana D'Urv. This name has about ten years priority 

 over Carex f estiva Dewey, and accordingly must be used for the 

 boreal plant under discussion. 



This boreal plant is one representative of a series of closely 

 related species, many of which are found in the higher mountains 

 of the western part of North America. Taking these species to- 

 gether the tendency is rather strongly toward the development of 

 a more congested inflorescence than is found in Carex 



