= 78. ` ON AIRA ULIGINOSA AS A BRITISH PLANT. 
The ‘Supplement’ to m Cybele Britannica ;’ presented by H. C. 
Watson, Ene 
ON AIRA ULIGINOSA AS A BRITISH PLANT. 
By J. G. Baker, Esq., F.L.S. 
Aira uliginosa, a plant I have often looked for without success in 
the north of England, seems to have been known to some of our 
botanists as a native plant many years ago. The Rev. W. W. New- 
bould informs me that there is a specimen labelled ‘ From near the 
Loch of Drum, Aberdeenshire,” sent to Sowerby, and now in the 
British Museum Herbarium, and I have myself seen examples gathered 
by George Don, both at Kew (from Turner’s collection), and from 
that of Winch, in the Mnseum of the Literary and Philosophical So- 
ciety at Newcastle-on-Tyne. On the label of the specimen at Kew, 
written of course long before the plant was published as a distinet 
species in Germany, Don, who does not mention his locality, expresses 
his opinion upon the plant as follows :—* Aira I call in my herbarium 
uliginosu; it comes near flexuosa, but it differs by the smallness of its 
leaves and in the straightness of its leaves, and it is constitutionally 
different, if I may be allowed to use the expression, for it only grows 
under water or (in) places that are inundated in the winter season, 
-and I have tried repeatedly to cultivate it in dry ground but could not 
d 393 
Undoubtedly it comes very near to flexuosa. The principal charac- 
ters relied upon to distinguish it are three :—1st. There is in uliginosa 
a stalk to the second flower of the spikelet which equals half its length, 
whilst in flexuosa both the flowers are very nearly, or one quite and 
the other very nearly, sessile. 2nd. The ligule in uliginosa is ovate 
and acute, in flexuosa short and truncate; and, 3rd. The leaf, though 
very narrow in both, in flexuosa is said to be solid and filiform, but, 
in uliginosa, flat or only rolled together. 
eihe and Bönninghausen, in their original description (Prodr. 
Fl. Monast. p. 25), write of it as follows :—* Differt a precedente, cui 
valde similis, foliis angustissimis planis vel complicatis, nec tereti-fili- 
formibus solidis, ligula longe acuminata, panieula magis multiflora, 
spieulis duplo minoribus, glumis obtusioribus fere zequalibus, floseulis 
