150 ENGLISH BOTANY. 



leaves are shorter, much narrower, paler green ; the sheaths of the stem 

 leaves with the free scarious lolie longer than broad. The lowest female 

 spike is placed much nearer the base of the stem, the spikes are shorter, 

 the glumes broader, shorter, blunter, and ■with a shorter mucro, and 

 brown, not chocolate; the fruit is pale in colour, and has the dots 

 on it concolorous, and the ribs much more equal; in shajje it is less 

 expanded in the middle, and the beak is shorter and less deeply 

 toothed. The nut is less truncate at the apex. 



In C. distans the ribs are sometimes very faint, in which case it 

 has frequently been mistaken for C. punctata. 



Distant-spiked Sedge. 



French, Carex espace. German, Entfenit dhrige Segge. 



SPECIES LIV.— CAREX PUNCTATA. Gaud. 



Plate MDCLXXI. 



EeicJi. Ic. Fl. Germ, et Helv. Vol. VHI. Tab. CCLI. Fig. 619. 

 Billot, Fl. Gall, et Germ. Exsicc. No. 3258. 



Rootstock caispitose with very shortly creeping branches, each of 

 which produces several flowering shoots and barren stems at the apex. 

 Stem erect, slender, rather stiff, triangular, smooth throughout, leafy 

 only near the base. Leaves shorter than the stem, firm, linear, flat, 

 slightly rough on the margins at the apex, pale green, but scarcely 

 glaucous. Male spike 1, longly (more rarely shortly) stalked, linear- 

 cylindrical, scarcely clavate, with oblong very obtuse reddish-brown 

 glumes with narrow pale scarious margins. Female spikes 2 to 4, 

 remote or distant, the lowest one above the middle of the stem, on a 

 long included or slightly exserted stalk, the upper ones on short 

 slightly exserted stalks, erect, oblong or oblong-cylindrical or ovoid- 

 oblong, dense, many-flowered. Bracts sheathing, foliaceous, lamina 

 of the lowest one much longer than its own spike, and frequently 

 reaching or even exceeding the apex of the male spike. Glumes of 

 the female flowers broadly ovate, strongly mucronate, pale reddish- 

 bro^vn, with a broad green stripe on the back and very narrow scarious 

 margins, shorter than but nearly as broad as the fruit. Fruit spread- 

 ing, not stipitate, oval, very slightly narrowed towards the base and 

 apex, ovoid-trigonous, greatly inflated, with no ribs but the two rather 

 faint marginal ones, slightly shining, green, ultimately olive, con- 

 colorous, pellucidly jmnctate, abruptly narrowed into a rather short 

 straight plano-convex smooth-edged shortly 2-toothed beak, not half 

 as long as the rest of the fruit; teeth of the beak erect, smooth. 

 Stigmas 3. Nut substipitate, olive-yellow, oval-obovate, triquetrous, 



