MACKENZIE: NOTES ON CAREX 235 
The following specimens have been examined : 
NortH Carona: Satula Mt. (near Highlands), Biltmore wo. 
2686, May 25, 1897 (type in herb. N. Y. Bot. Gard.); Macon 
County, Buckley (Columbia Univ.); Chimney Rock Mt., Rutherford 
County, Biltmore vo. 268e, May 10, 1898 (N. Y. Bot. Gard.); Craggy 
Mt., Buncombe County, Biltmore xo. 268a, May 18, 1898 (N. Y. 
Bot. Gard.). 
The species discussed under this heading may be distinguished 
from one another by the following key : 
Culms phyllopodic, not strongly purplish-tinged at base, spreading by 
eep-seated slender white rootstocks. 
Blades of fertile culm 2—3.5 mm. wide ; perigynia 2-3 mm. long ; 
spikes linear ; plant slender. C. tetanica. 
Blades of fertile culm 3-7 mm. saa: perigynia longer; spikes 
oblong or linear-oblong ; plant stoutish. C. Meadii. 
Culms a strongly purplish- aaa at base, loosely stolonifer- 
r with interwoven stout rootstocks. 
Pcasly stoloniferous ; culms slender; larger blades 4 mm. wide. C, colorata, 
Not loosely stoloniferous, but with interwoven stout rootstocks ; 
culms stout ; larger blades § mm. wide. C, biltmoreana. 
CAREX RIPARIA AND ITS NorTH AMERICAN ALLIES 
The common sedge which has of late years been treated in our 
text-books as specifically identical with Carex riparia Curtis of 
Europe was by many of our earlier writers treated as a distinct 
species under the name of Carex /acustris Willd. In the treatment 
of the genus Carex in the Pflanzenreich, Herr Kikenthal has 
adopted a middle course and made our plant a variety of the Eu- 
ropean plant. He has, however, clearly pointed out the marked 
differences which exist between the two. These differences hold 
good in a large series of American specimens and a considerable 
series of European specimens examined by me. The plants, too, 
do not have a circumboreal distribution, and, as is well known, there 
are very few American species of Carex not having a circumboreal 
distribution which are specifically identical with European species. 
There being these marked differences between the European and 
American plants and their ranges being so different I cannot un- 
derstand how one can logically be treated as a variety of the other. 
It seems to me that the only proper way to do is to recognize the 
plants as distinct species, and this is what I shall do. 
