Piate XCVII. 
CYPERUS metanoruizus, Delile. 
Natural Order Cyrrracem. 
Gen. Cuar.—“ Perennial, rarely annual, rushy or grass-like herbs of 
various habit. Spikelets linear, compressed, in lateral or terminal 
usually bracteate heads, or branched umbels or panicles. Glwmes many, 
distichous, concave, keeled, deciduous, all or most flowering. Flowers 
2-sexual. Bristles 0. Stamens 1-3. Style deciduous, not tumid at the 
base, stigmas 2-3. Fruit 3-gonous or, compressed.”—Hooxker, Student's 
Flora of Brit. Is., p. 405. 
Spec. Cuar.—Spikelets arranged in a simple, or, more rarely, com- 
pound umbel, of many rays; general involucral bracts leafy, one or more 
exceeding the rays of the umbel. Spikelets linear lanceolate, laterally 
compressed ; glumes ovate, obtuse with a short mucro, many-nerved. 
Achenes.... . [“elliptic, triquetrous, obtuse, apiculate, punctulate 
under the lens (olivaceous), shorter than the glume by one-half.” —Parla- 
tore.|* Stem triquetrous. Rhizome stoloniferous, each stolon usually 
ending in an edible tuber about the size of a nut, which when young is 
covered with brownish scales, and short white root-like processes, but 
finally becomes nearly black, and is surrounded with narrow zones 
formed by the ridges which mark the bases of the fallen scales. 
Cyperus melanorhizus, Delile, Ilust. Fl. AAgyp. No. 40; Cyp. aureus, 
Ten. Fl. Nap. Prodr. p. 8; Gren. et Godr. Fl. de Fr. iii, 360; Ardoino, 
Fl. Alp. Mar. p. 394; Cyp. Tenori, Presl. Fl. Sic. p. 43; Woods, Tour. 
Fl. p. 360 (part). 
Remarxks.—Professor Parlatore, and other botanists who have had 
opportunities of examining Cyperus esculentus, Linn., in cultivation, are 
of opinion that it should probably be treated as a domesticated variety 
of Cyp. melanorhizus, Del. This latter plant grows at Mentone as a weed 
of terraced ground devoted to lemons and oranges; and appears to be 
there dependent on its tubers for multiplication, for I have never been 
able to find a single ripe seed. 
Still I cannot learn that it has ever been cultivated by the peasants 
for the sake of its nut-flavoured tubers,f as the esculent variety is in 
southern Italy, Spain, and Syria. At Pegli, near Genoa, Cyp. melano- 
rhizus is stated to grow in the garden of the Villa Grimaldi, and there is 
a specimen at Kew from Mabille’s Herbarium Corsicum, No. 255, gathered 
* Parlatore, Fl. Ital. ii. 33. 
+ The tubers of the Mentonese plant are quite sweet and nutty, and not as in the 
Corsican and “Toulon” plant, described by MM. Grenier and Godron, bitter. ‘The 
supposed existence of this species at l'oulon has, | believe, not been confirmed. 
