— Ee 
RT 
f 
1 
f 
NOTE ON THE GENUS ARTHROSTYLIS. 63 
Pers. ; 4, spores, x 700 diem —Prar&£ XC. : Fig. 1, foc (Entoloma) juba- 
tus ,Er.; 2, section a. "enu 3, spores y ditto, x 700 dia: ; 4, 5, nt ied 
calyptraformis, B. and Br. ; 6, section of ditto ; 7, spores sof ditto, x 700 diam 
NOTE ON THE GENUS ARTHROSTYLIS, R. Br. 
By H. F. Hance, Pa.D., ETC. 
In the * Flora Hongkongensis,’ Mr. Bentham, following Brown, as- 
signs to this genus all “the characters of Rhynchospora, except that 
there are no hypogynous bristles, and the style is articulate upon the 
ovary below the dilated base." I may remark, however, that both in 
the Singhalese Arthrostylis filiformis, Thw., and the Hongkong 
A. Chinensis, Benth., I find the squame distichously imbricate, as, in- 
deed, they are described by Steudel (Synops. Pl. Cyper. 138), not 
imbricate all round, as in Rhynchospora. In this respect, therefore, 
the two genera stand towards each other in the same relation as Fim- 
bristylis and Abildgaardia, which, on account of various transitions, 
Dr. Thwaites has, with his usual judgment, united ; and it is certain 
that some ZAyachospore show a tendency to a Tab arrangement 
of the scales. In the Ceylon species I can detect no hypogynous 
set: ; but they were certainly present and very conspicuous in all the 
flowers of the Hongkong one I examined some years back; and Mr. 
Sampson, who is a very careful and trustworthy bporenr, finds the 
same in specimens gathered by him last autumn, an observation I have 
myself verified. The instability of this character in very many genera 
of the Order is now, however, fully established, so that Parlatore, Asa 
Gray, and most other eminent modern botanists concur in the pro- 
priety of reducing Isolepis to Scirpus, the two merely differing by the 
absence or presence of these organs. Apart from the distichous ar- 
rangement of the squam:e, more or less observable, as just remarked, 
in some Rhynchospore, Arthrostylis differs from that genus by the 
style being, as in Fimbristylis, artieulated below, instead of above the 
bulb-shaped base,—a distinction of small account morphologically, I 
think. On the other hand, I do not see that there is any single cha- 
racter by which it can be distinguished from Schænus (including 
fospora), and in habit it is exceedingly like S. ferrugineus, L. I 
believe there is probably no single Order in which, in proportion to 
the number now universally admitted, so many of the genera will, on 
F2 
