76 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



uppermost one about as long as its sheath. Spikes solitary or in 

 pairs, numerous, stalked and sessile, in a simple or slightly com- 

 pound umbellate corymb, obconical-obovate and subobtuse at the 

 apex. Peduncles finely scabrous, inclined or drooping. Bracts 

 unequal, foliaceous, the lowest one about as long as or shorter than 

 the longest peduncle. Glumes elliptical-lanceolate, acute, blackish- 

 olive, with narrow white scarious margins. Hypogynous bristles very 

 numerous, in fruit straight and three or four times as long as the 

 glumes. Nut oblanceolate, rounded at the apex, and very shortly 

 mucronate, compressed-trigonous. 



In bogs. Local, but widely distributed, extending from Devon and 

 the Isle of Wight to Sutherland, but rare in the south of England and 

 east of Scotland ; most abundant in the north of England and south- 

 west of Scotland. Very rare in Ireland, and found only in the middle 

 and north-east. 



England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Early Summer. 



E. latifolium is readily known from the other British species with 

 many spikes, by its very shortly creeping rootstock and ctespitose habit, 

 and also by the broad flat leaves, triangular only at the point. The 

 stems are 18 inches to 3 feet high; the spikes are about -| inch long in 

 flower, and 1 or li inch in fruit, usually more numerous than in E. 

 angustifolium or E. gracile, and with the bristles shorter in proportion 

 to the glumes and nut than in the latter species, which it resembles in 

 its roughened peduncles, but the roughness consists rather of short 

 asperities than of haii-s. The nut is reddish-brown and more dis- 

 tinctly mucronate than in E. gracile. 



Dovmy-stalhed Cotton Grass. 

 French, hinaigrette a pedoticules rudes. German, Breithdlttriges Wollgras. 



Tribe III.— CAPJCEtE. 

 Flowers all unisexual, monoecious, rarely dioecious. 



GENUS F///.— KOBRESIA. Willd. 



Flowers unisexual, monoecious, arranged in spikelets which are few- 

 flowered and disposed in a spike, which is simple, or compound at the 

 base. Glumes of each spikelet 3 or 2, the lowest one largest and 

 empty, the second of all the spikelets (or at least of the lowest) having 

 a female flower in its axil, the third having a male flower, or empty and 

 rudimentary ; in one' species the uppermost spikelets have the lower 



