AMONG THE WILD FLOWERS. 107 
relation to one another is not easily recognised 
apart from really scientific observation. One 
species, and only one, Carex dzozca, is dicecious, 
having the fertile spike on one plant, the 
barren one on another; three other species 
have only one spike, which has male flowers 
at the top and female below; twenty others 
have, in one and the same spike, spikelets with 
both male and female flowers; the spike is 
therefore called compound; in a few species 
the spikes are Aanzcled, or branched; the re- 
mainder of the species have one or more 
terminal spikes wholly or partly male, others 
axillary—t.e., produced between the stem, and 
the leaf or bract—and fertile. 
The study of a few actual specimens will 
make these distinctions clear. Perhaps what 
has been said above respecting the stems and 
leaves of Carices and Grasses is the most 
decisive method of distinguishing the one from 
the other. 
Some of the Carices are extremely hand- 
some in respect of the graceful form of their 
spikes, especially those larger kinds which in- 
habit damp woods, growing several feet high. 
The two species found by river-sides, and in 
