302 Monograph of North American Carices. 



Culm 6 inches to a foot or more in height, nearly hexangular, (i. e. trian- 

 gular, with an elevation on each side) smooth and leafy below, scabrous 

 above. Leaves mostly radical, shorter than the culm, linear, narrow, 

 pale green, the exterior ones abbreviate and brownish ; sheaths marces- 

 cent, mucronate. Spikes 3—4 — 5 (sometimes 9 Muhl.) the upper ones 

 crowded and subconfluent, the lowest rather distant, few-flowered : sterile 

 florets about 2, deciduous. Glumes ovate, sometimes oblong-lanceolate, 

 mucronate, usually a very little shorter than the fruit, brownish, with a 

 green midrib. At the base of the lowest spikelet the glume is produced 

 into a setaceous bractea, which is often half an inch or more in length, 

 but very deciduous. Fruit obscurely triangular with a short bifid neck, 

 margin rounded and quite smooth, when mature retroflexed or very di- 

 vergent. Seed smooth, compressed, brown. 



Hac. In grassy woods and meadow margins ; rather com- 

 mon in the northern States. 



Obs. Allied to C. rosea, of which it has been suspected to 

 be a small variety. It is distinguished, however, by the 

 scale of the fruit, which is ovate, obtuse, and about half 

 the length of the C. rosea. In that species the spikes are 

 much larger and more distant, and the margin of the fruit 

 is scabrous. 



15. Carex rosea, Schkuhr. 



C. spiculis 4-6, remotis, subnovemfloris ; bractea setacea 

 sub infima spicam superante; fructibus ovatis, acuminatis, 

 divergento-radiatis ; margine scabris, distinctis ; glumis 

 ovatis, obtusis, fructu duplo-brevioribus. 



C. rosea, IVilld. sp.pl. iv. p. 238. Schk. car. ii. p. 15. t. 

 Zzz. f. 179. opt. Purshji. i. p. 36. Muhl. gram. p. 233. 

 Elliott s7c.il. p. 531. 



C. echinata jS. radiata WaM. act. Holm. 1803. p. 147. 



Culm usually about a foot high, sometimes much lower, and occasionally 

 two feet long when it is decumbent, triquetrous, with two of the sides 

 elevated into ridges, naked, or only leafy below. Leaves* linear, 

 very narrow, equalling the culm except when the plant is unusually 

 tall ; the lower marcescent sheaths leafless. Spikelets 3 — 4 — 5 — 6, the 

 lower ones nearly an inch remote from each other, the two upper closely 



