Professor Dewey'' s Caricography, 269 



ded and very short-beaked, oblique at the orifice, and equal 

 to the oblong scale." 



This is a very distinct species, growing in tufts upon hills 

 with open woods. It has a lax culm, and is clearly distin- 

 guished by its pistillate spikes and shape of its fruit. It 

 agrees perfectly with the figure in Schk., and answers also 

 to the description. It has passed under several names. It 

 is scarcely necessary to remark that C. alpestris, Pers. is 

 a very different plant. 



Of the species of Carex found in our country and descri- 

 bed by various authors, some have evidently been confound- 

 ed with others, and some have not been so perfectly de- 

 scribed as to be readily distinguished from others to which 

 they are related. Among them are the following. 



1. Carex cephalophora. Wahl. 



Pursh, Muh. Pers. Nutt. and Eaton. 

 Schk. tab. Hhh. fig. 133. 

 The name of this species, though credited to Wahl. by 

 Schk. is not in Wahl. Cariographien, and I am unable to 

 find any description of his which corresponds to it. Con- 

 siderable difficulty has arisen in ascertaining this species on 

 account of the section in which it is placed by most authors. 

 Ph. places it in the section, spikes androgynous^ and subdi- 

 vision, spike single, staminate at the apex. Yet his de- 

 scription, taken like most of them from Willd. Sp. Pi. 

 shows that the spike is compound, and Schk. has the popu- 

 lar remark upon it; "spicis sub-senis, W." It should, 

 therefore be placed in the sub-division, spikes many, stami- 

 nate at the apex. Nuttall and Eaton put it in the same 

 place. Pursh was probably led into this mistake by con- 

 sidering C typhina, Mx. as the same plant, for he gives it 

 as a synonyme. The characters of C. typhina, prove it to 

 be a very different plant, and it is generally considered as 

 the C. squarrosa, L. so well described by Muh. who closes 

 his description by the words, '■^ An C. typhina, Jk/x.^" 



C. cephalophora is readily distinguished, by its small ag- 

 gregated spikelets ; its compressed ovate fruit, scabrous above ; 

 and its small ovate scale, scarcely half the length of the fruit 

 and terminating in a cuspidate scabrous awn extending about 

 to the end of the fruit. It is said by Muh. to be from two 

 to four feet high, but I have rarely found it to exceed twen- 

 ty inches, and it is often much less. 



