270 Professor t)ewey''s Caricography. 



2. C. squarrosa. L. 



Muh. Pers. Rees' Cyc. and Schk- 



C. /^'pAzVic, Mx. var. of C. squarrosa. Pers. 



There is no fig. of this carex in Schk. but it is so well 

 described by him and Muh. that there can be no doubt 

 about it. It should be in a new section in Ph. and Eaton, 

 under the general division, stigmas three, and a new subdi- 

 vision, spike single, staminate below. 



Its description might then be as follows. 



Spike oblong-eylindric ; fruit imbricate, ovate with a long 

 beak, two toothed, horizontal, glabrous and sub-squarrose, 

 longer than the lanceolate scale. 



C. squarrosa is readily distinguished by its large and 

 thick spike covered below with the dry staminate scales, 

 and above by its close set, ovate, long beaked, horizontal 

 fruit ; and its rather slender culm and long leaves. 



Schk. inquires whether it has two or three stigmas. 

 Muh. says it has three, and I have never found it with less 

 than three. It sometimes has two spikes, as Muh. re- 

 marks ; but they are far distant and the lower is supported 

 on a long peduncle. 



Pursh does not give C. squarrosa, unless he confounded 

 it with C. cephalophora. It seems indeed scarcely possible 

 that any one, whahad seen both, should consider them as 

 at all alike : and yet it is singular that C. squarrosa should 

 have escaped the eye of Ph.* The fig. in Schk. is correct- 

 ly referred to by Ph. under C. cephalophora; had he never 

 seen the plant he describes, he could not have confounded 

 C. squarrosa, if famihar with the plant, with that shown by 

 the figure of Schk. 



* It is not indeed to be expected that Pursb's Flora should be entirely 

 free from mistakes. But in some cases, the mistake is not easily accounted 

 for. Thus to the description of Xylosteum villosum, Mx. taken almost 

 verbatim from Mx. Pursh has added a character, '■'■baccis distincHs,''' which 

 contradicts his generie description. The consequence has been, that a 

 plant, which Sprengel in a letter, and most of our botanists call X villosum, 

 is considered in the Manual of Botany to be probably a new species, and is 

 called X. solonis. The mistake is the greater in this case, as the berries of 

 X. villosum are not connate, but" adnate, much resembling those of 

 some other plants. The generic description of Ph. is therefore defective, and 

 requires the additional character given by Mx, viz. " baccae duae basi 

 Qonnatie.— aut coadunatae in unicam supra biumbilicatam.^' The phrase, 

 baccis distinelis, should be omitted in the specific description of X villosum 

 in Ph. ^ 



