124 85. CYPERACE.E. 



1241. Carex panicea, Linn. 



Area general. 



South limit in Cornwall, Isle of Wight, Kent. 



North limit in Shetland (Neill), Orkney, Hebrides. 



Estimate of provinces 18. Estimate of counties 83. 



Latitude 50 — 61. British tj^pe of distribution. 



A. A. regions. Inferagrarian — Midarctic zones. 



Descends to the coast level, in the Peninsula. 



Ascends to 800 yards, in East Highlands. 



Range of mean annual temperature 53 — 38. 



Native. Paludal, Pratal. A very common Carex ; and 

 one liable to very little doubt respecting its distribution ; 

 and yet not wholly free from some degree of uncertainty. 

 Thus, Dr. Neill mentions it as seen in Shetland f and it 

 is nevertheless excluded from the Flora of Shetland, by 

 Mr. Edmondston ; — perhaj^s, through inadvertence, as it 

 is not mentioned even to introduce a reason for disre- 

 garding Neill's authority in the case of a species so fa- 

 miliar and general. Again, in my notes of measuring 

 excursions into the Highlands, in the years 1841 and 

 1844, I find no memorandum of seeing C. panicea higher 

 than 700 or 800 yards, — altitudes between those heights 

 repeatedly occurring in the notes. But in 1833 I had 

 made a note of C. panicea so high as 1250 yards on Ben- 

 na-muic-dhu, — a time when I followed the British Flora 

 in considering C. vaginata (phseostachya) a form or variety 

 of C. panicea ; and the elevated station may thus belong 

 to the latter, more exclusively a mountain plant. " On the 

 rocks of Stuich-an-lochan, above Loch-na-cai, Ben Lawers, 

 along with C. vaginata" (Mr. J. T. Syme, MSS.). 



