20 Note on Carex loliacea. 
pressis erectis.”* This character was evidently drawn from the 
specimen in his herbarium marked fol. 2, the source of which is 
not recorded, and from which Kunth has also recently derived 
an additional description of C. loliacea; while the fol. 1, holdsa 
Swedish specimen of a different plant, sent by Swartz under the 
name of C. loliacea, which (judging from a memorandum made 
on inspection several years ago) is most probably the C. tenella 
ofsSchkuhr. This C. tenella, Willdenow remarks, is the same 
as C. loliacea, but is incorrectly delineated and described by 
Schkuhr as having the spikelets masculine at the summit. Here 
is the beginning of the confusion, soon further complicated by 
Schkuhr himself, in which these two very distinct species have 
ever since been involved. > 
Schkuhr established and figured his C. tenella, in the first part 
of his work on Carices, in 1802, (No. 15, t. Pp, f. 104,) upon a 
plant which he found in the herbarium of a friend, who was 
entirely ignorant of its source, or even whether he had collected 
it himself or received it from a correspondent. This friend, as 
he elsewhere states, was Hedwig. Schkuhr’s herbarium shows 
that he subsequently received the same species from Sweden, 
through Thunberg, ticketed “C. loliacea, Linn. In Nordlandia 
Norvegie rarius, per Nordlandiam Suecie copiose.” In the 
same work, Schkuhr also figured (t. E, f. 24) a plant of unte- 
corded origin, which he took for the C. gracilis of “ Bhrhart, 
Gram. [Phytophylac?] 78.” The specimen which Schkuhr fig- 
ured is not preserved in his herbarium; but in a paper fixed to the 
folio under this name, marked “‘ Saamen,” I found the very petigy- 
nium and achenium (2. e.) separately delineated in his figure. 1he 
perigynium is distinctly beaked, the staminate flowers are plainly 
depicted as occupying the summit of the spikelets, and the whole 
figure so nearly agrees with the smaller states of C. rosea, that I 
can scarcely doubt it was derived from that plant. In place of 
the specimen actually figured, the herbarium of Schkuhr contains 
one with a printed ticket, “C. gracilis, Ehrh.: Upsal,’” which 1s 
probably an authentic specimen from Ehrhart’s original collection, 
but which, as it certainly is not the plant which Schkuhr has 
depicted, I suppose to have been received at a later period, 
that the specimen which served for the figure in question was 
then discarded. 
On obtaining possession of this authentic specimen (aS I take 
it to be) of Ehrhart’s C. gracilis, Schkuhr could not ‘fail to 
perceive that it was precisely the same species with his ow? 
C. tenella, and with what had already been sent him from Swe- 
den under the name of ©. loliacea. Accordingly, in his Supple 
ment, (1806,) he united the two, (but without explaining the 
Se ea 
* Wild, Sp. Pl. 4, p. 237. 
