228 Revision of the Genus Scleria, 



IX. — A Revision of the North American Species of the 

 Genus Scieria. 



BY S. L. BR1TT0X. 

 Read May 25th, 1885. 



The genus Scleria contains, according to Bentham and 

 Hooker, about one hundred species, distributed throughout the 

 warmer regions of the globe, in North America aloue extending 

 into the higher temperate zone — one species reaching even into 

 Canada. The materials on which the present arrangement of 

 our forms is based comprise the specimens in the Philadelphia 

 Academy of Natural Sciences ; in Dr. Gray's Herbarium; in the 

 Torrey, Meisner, and Chapman Herbaria, of Columbia College ; 

 those of the Torrey Botanical Club ; of the private herbaria of 

 Judge Addison Brown, Mr. I. C. Martindale, and Mr. J. H. 

 Redfield, and my own collection for the Geological Survey of 

 New Jersey. 



Scleria. — Berg, in K. Vetensk.. Acad. Handl., Stockholm, xxvi (1765), 

 142, t. 4, 5. Flowers unisexual, the fertile solitary, in androgynous spike- 

 lets below the sterile, or in distinct spikelets ; the sterile indefinite in num- 

 ber in androgynous or distinct spikelets. Glumes imbricated on all sides, 

 the 1 — 3 lower and sometimes 1 — 3 above the fertile flowers empty. Bristles of 

 the hypogynium none. Stamens 1, 2, or rarely 3. Style continuous with 

 the ovary, terete, or somewhat swollen at the base ; divisions of the stigma 

 3, filiform*. Achenium globose or ovoid, often white, obtuse and erostrate, 

 or mucronate by the short, persistent base of the style, the gynophore often 

 supported by a simple or double cartilaginous dilated disk, which is rarely 

 obsolete. — Herbs. Leaves either flaccid and grasslike, or long, broad, and 

 plicate-nervose. Spikelets small, in terminal, or terminal and axillary, or 

 glomerate-spicate fascicles. Bracts leafiike or setaceous. (Vide Bentham 

 and Hooker, Gen. Plant., iii, pt. ii, 1070.) 



