ENGELMANN—NORTH AM. SPECIES OF JUNCUS. 455 
distinguished from all our other species by the purple, or, when 
dry, red-brown color (already noticed by La Harpe) of its 
three anthers, which usually exceed the outer sepals in 
length; it is further characterized by the acute outer sepals 
being much shorter than the obtuse or, sometimes, mucronate 
inner ones; by the ovate, obtuse ovary, with the almost 
sessile, enclosed stigmas of the same length; and the sub- 
globose, obtuse, mucronulate capsule. The seeds are quite 
variable in size and form, but always strongly pointed or 
almost caudate and conspicuously ribbed, with few (4 or 5, 
or, at most, 6) ribs visible, lineolate or, rarely, reticulate ; 
they are commonly slender, obliquely lanceolate or fusiform, 
but in Lindheimer’s FI. Tex. exsice. 193, which has been 
named J. heteranthos, they are quite short, ovate obtuse and 
abruptly apiculate. The length of the seeds varies from 0.22 
to 0.55 line, and their thickness from } to } of their length. 
—ZJ. aristulatus, Michx. 1, 191, and J. aristatus, Pers. Syn. 1, 
385, are exactly the same; J. biflorus, Ell. Sketch, 1, 407,* 
and J. heteranthos, Nutt. Pl. Arkans. in Trans. Am. Phil. 
Soc. V. 153, are forms of the same with fewer flowers in the 
head. J. cylindricus, Curtis, Sillim. Journ. 44, 83; Steud. 
Glum. 2, 304, is a form with heads elongated into spikes 6 
lines long and 3 lines in diameter, sterile below, only the 
uppermost flowers bearing fruit; outer sepals almost as long 
as Inner ones. 
We may distinguish the following forms: 
Var. a. vulgaris, 14-3 feet high, with 5-8-flowered heads 
in a compound or decompound panicle; the common form. 
Var. 8. biflorus, as tall as the former, with 2-3-flowered 
heads in a decompound, often very large, panicle; a southern 
form, from Delaware, A. Commons, to Texas. 
Var. y. paucicapitatus, 1-14 feet high, with few (2-6 or 8) 
larger 8-12-flowered heads; Long Branch, New Jersey, C. 
W. Short, and elsewhere. 
32. J. pELocarpus, EH. Mey. Synops. Luzul. p. 30; La 
Harpe Monog. 124; Kunth En. 3, 333, non Auct. Amer.: 
rhizomate horizontali tenui pallido; caulibus (spithameis pe- 
dalibus et ultra) gracilibus teretiusculis erectis paucifoliis ; 
foliis teretiusculis indistincte nodulosis; paniculee decompo- 
site laxw ramis plerumque elongatis secundifloris demum re- 
curvis; floribus (parvis) singulis binisve sepe in gemmam 
vel ramulum foliosum abortientibus; sepalis oblongis obtusis, 
exterioribus plerumque brevioribus rarius mucronatis stamina 
6 et ovarium acuminatum in stylum breviorem abiens vix 
superantibus; antheris late linearibus filamento multo (duplo 
* The inner sepals, however, are not the shortest, as the usually so 
careful and reliable Elliott, probably by a lapse of the pen, says, but, as 
in all the forms of this “species, the longest. 
