CYPERACEiE. 141 



with a few female flowers intermixed, slender, solitary. Female 

 spikes 3 to 6, lax, on long capillary exserted stalks, or the upper 

 ones on shorter stalks or subsessile, erect, frequently ultimately in- 

 clined or drooping and more or less arching. Glumes of the female 

 flowers green or reddish-olive with a green midrib, usually with 

 broad whitish scarious margins. Bracts all foliaceous, long, but 

 rarely reaching the apex of the male spike, and generally much 

 shorter ; the lowest ones (or all) with long closed sheaths. Fruit 

 green or ultimately oUve, iisually more or less stipitate, variable in 

 shape, slightly or scarcely at all inflated, smooth, usually shining, 

 rarely dim, usually ribbed, with a beak of variable length. Stigmas 

 3. Nut trigonous or triquetrous, rather loosely covered by the peri- 

 gynium. 



Stem leafy throughout, the lowest sheaths sometimes without a 

 lamina. Leaves rather broad. 



SPECIES XLVin.— CAREX STRIGOSA. BhOs. 



Plate IIDCLXI. 



Ttekh. Ic. Fl. Germ, et Helv. Vol. VIII. Tab. CCXLII. Fig. 602. 

 BlUot, Fl. Gall, et Gei-m. Exsicc. No. 872. 



Rootstock subcfespitose, with shortly creeping thick branches, each 

 of which produces several flowering stems and barren shoots from its 

 apex. Stem erect, rather slender, weak, trigonous, smooth and leafy 

 throughout, but a few of the lowest sheaths without a lamina. Leaves 

 shorter than the stem, flaccid, broadly linear, those of the ban-en 

 shoots much longer and broader than those on the stem, all flat, 

 slightly rough on the margins towards the apex, pale green, not 

 glaucous. Male spike 1, more or less conspicuously stalked, linear- 

 cylindrical, narrowed at the base, with long lanceolate-linear shortly 

 acuminate and acute glumes. Female spikes 3 to 6, remote, the lowest 

 on long greatly exserted capillary stalks, and the upper on short slightly 

 exserted stalks, suberect, at length slightly curved outwards, linear- 

 cylindrical, very lax, very many -flowered. Bracts (or at least all except 

 the uppermost) sheathing, foliaceous, with the lamina exceeding its 

 own spike, but not reaching the apex of the male spike. Glumes of 

 the female flowers oblong-lanceolate or oblong-ovate, acute, pale green 

 with very broad white scarious margins, ultimately nearly wholly 

 white, shorter than but as broad as the fruit, persistent. Fruit erect, 

 almcst sessile, elliptical-lanceolate, acuminate at each end, but most 

 towards the apex, bluntly triangular, slightly inflated, strongly and 



