271 
CAREX CA:SPITOSA L. Fr. IN YORKSHIRE. 
ARTHUR BENNETT, F.L.S. 
Unper this name in our old Floras, vulgaris, stricta, and acuta have 
passed, and although in the first edition of the ‘Species Plantarum’ 
(1753), the name is not quite free from ambiguity, still the 
Scandinavian botanists from Fries to the present time give the name 
to a tufted (czespitose) strict habited plant, with leafless flower stems, 
bracts with broad amplexicaul bases, neat regularly arranged fruit 
spikes (much like C. stricta Good. on a small scale), the glumes 
broad, generally shorter than the fruits, fruits with minute impressions 
all over and nerveless, or nearly so. Here it may be said that Boott, 
in his splendid work on the genus Carex, notes that Fries’ words 
must not be taken too literally where he says ‘enervis,’ and this 
I have myself seen on his specimens. 
The discovery of this as a Yorkshire plant was made in the 
following way. Mr. Duncan lately sent me a very puzzling Carex 
from the Outer Hebrides, and turning over my v«/garis sheets to try 
and connect an odd character his plant showed, on the second sheet 
Mr. Percival’s specimen at once said : ‘I saw cesfitosa, and so it proved. 
In the summer of 1884, Mr. Percival sent me many Carices from 
Carperby in Wensleydale, this among them, and it has remained 
unrecognised ever since. 
Mr. Beeby gathered in Unst, Shetland a Carex that was named 
by Dr. Lange ‘ C. cesfitosa, L.’; it occurred sparingly by the Loch of 
Cliff. 
Only a couple of weeks before this my friend, Mr. Miller, sent 
me Carex fusca All. (= C. Buxbaumii Wahl.), from Westerness in 
Scotland, where it occurs in abundance around a Loch in the district 
of Arisaig ; and I believe Mr. Duncan’s Hebridean Carex is a new 
ene to our Flora. 
Abroad, the distribution of C. cesfitosa is :—-in Europe, Scandinavia, 
Germany in the wide sense, throughout Russia, Holland, doubtful 
for Switzerland, Iceland, the Faroes; in Asia, across Siberia to 
Behring Straits, Davuria; in America, indicated for Greenland by 
Drejer, but not lately confirmed, in Canada?, and the United States ?; 
and perhaps in Australia, but the specimens look different. 
From doubts as to the meaning that Linnzeus applied in some of 
his works, authors have re-named this species under C. facifica 
Drejer, Fl. Ex: Hafn. 292, 1838, C. Dreeri, O. F. Lang, ‘ Flora,’ 
548, 1843, and there are several other names that have been given 
in local continental Floras. 
Sept. 1895. 
