NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES OF JUNCUS. 255 
Sprengel’s collection, which seem also to have been the originals of his J. Muhlenberyii ss probably received from 
Muhlenberg ewrinpe i several specimens, obtained later from different sources (e. g. uckerman and A. Gray) are 
preserved in Meyer’s herbarium with the name of ‘‘J. pelocarpus” in his own si oath ; and others so named by 
him are found in Ay royal herbarium at Berlin. Now, this plant is so peculiar that no one who has ever exam 
ined it can confound it with any other ; is it, then, at all probable that Meyer bimself should have done so in his [457] 
own herbarium? His original specimens may not have exhibited the foliaceous excrescences, so that he could 
not mention them in his description of this species, while he did allude to similar ones in his account of his J. para- 
dozus ; his diagnosis is so short that he does not even mention the unusually small number of flowers. 
rhizoma is whitish and slender, often almost filiform, and sends out few and distant, or sometimes more 
crowded, slender and almost terete, not flattened, stems, 4 or 6 to 18 or 20 inches high ; leaves slender, almost seta- 
ceous, scarcely compressed, and incompletely knotted. The panicle shows very different forms in different specimens ; 
sometimes, probably in the earlier part of the season, it is only 2 or 3 inches long, and moderately spreading, with 
flowers more crowded ; but usually, at least in the numerous herbarium specimens examined by me, and perhaps later 
in the season, it attains a length of 4 or 6 inches, with about the same diameter, the few slender spreading or recurved 
branches bearing the distant flowers on one side. The flowers are green, with a reddish tinge, especially on the inner 
sepals, usually 1.0-1.3 lines long, and generally single ; sepals obtuse, sometimes mucronate, or rarely the outer ones 
acutish ; these are generally shorter than the inner ones; but in a Lake Superior specimen the flowers are only 0.8 
line ag. and all the sepals equal, broadly oval and fies, Stamens about the length of the outer sepals ; anthers 
always longer than filaments, sometimes scarcely twice as long, in others fully four dite their length. Style shorter 
than the acuminate ovary. The capsule ought not to have been described as Meyer and (copying him) La Harpe did, 
as triquetro-ovata mucronata ; it is rather, as Gray has it, taper beaked, and is completely one-celled, the lateral pla- 
cente occupying only the lowest third or fourth part of the commissure of the valves, Seeds 0.25 line long, delicately 
but distinctly reticulate, aree transversely lineolate. 
I cannot distinguish Dr. Chapman’s J. abortivus from the northern plant except by the not essential characters 
given above ; the flowers are absolutely identical, and fruit I have not seen 
ith some hesitation I add J. subtilis as a procumbent or floating variety with short internodes, and short leaves 
which bear leaf-buds in their axils. In American collections this form does not seem to exist, but La Harpe, who saw 
it in Michaux’s herbarium in Paris, gives a full description of it, from which I have extracted above; the flowers are 
described exactly like those of J. pelocarpus, and there is, notwithstanding the different habit, nothing in it 
that would specifically distinguish it, except the smaller number of stamens, and the single, two-flowered heads ; [458] 
fruit and seed are unknown. I take it for a depauperate water form of our species, while Hooker, Fl. Bor, Am. 
2, 191, unites it with J. uliginosus, which with him is what I have taken for J. alpinus ; but that is also a 6-androus 
species. The botanists of Canada and of our northern border ought to find it again and clear up these doubts. 
I have already (p. 426) spoken of the great morphological importance of this plant, which connects the single- 
flowered with the head-flowered species, and Asser as certainly might have been expected beforehand, that no abso- 
lute difference exists between them: that the flowers in all of them are really lateral ; that in the former only one 
flower is formed, while in the others a series e them, from two to an indefinite siiabee, are developed in centripetal 
order. In our species a second flower is more commonly not present, and its place is occupied by a bud, which often, 
and especially later in the season, grows to a leafy excrescence (whence the name viviparus) ; sometimes even the first 
flower is replaced by a leaf-bud, and in rare instances a leaf-bud makes its appearance between two flowers as a third 
axillary organ. I have never seen more than two flowers, nor more than one leaf-bud in a head. Botanists who have 
the opportunity ought to investigate the variations in the inflorescence of this plant according to locality, season, or 
other circumstances. 
3. J. aRrvicuatvus, Linn. That form of the Linnean species which was distinguished by Ehrhart as J. lampo- 
carpus, and which is common in northern Europe, has a very limited range in North America. All the specimens 1 
have seen came from the New England States (Boston, Pickering ; Amherst, Tuckerman ; and Providence and Nan- 
tucket, Olney) and from western New York (Penn Yan, Sartweil); to these La Harpe adds Newfoundland.— Stems 
densely cespitose from a creeping rootstock,with us usually erect and about one foot high ; panicle short, dense-flowered, 
spreading, brown ; sepals mostly equal, lanceolate, acute and mucronate, or inner ones slightly longer and sometimes 
obtusish ; stamens about two-thirds the length of the sepals, and anthers as long as filaments ; ovary acuminate, ter- 
minating in a style about half its length ; capsule longer than the sepals, acute, or even rostrate, at least in all the 
American specimens seen by me, and imperfectly three-celled, the placente not meeting in the centre. Seeds obovate, 
these plants, and of all their organs, and only after the date of having been able to compare Michaux’s original plants, I have 
his publication do we find in Meyer’s papers similar wet ae with confidence relied on the critical references of La Harpe, 
accounts in place of the former short diagnoses, e. he see 4 in regard to species about which aoe oo existed, 
Junci of the Reliquie Henkeane, published 1827, ” Not uch as J. fluitans, acuminatus, and polycephal 
