Cyperus.] CYPERACE^. 539 



1. C. longiis, L. Long-rooted Sweet Cyprus-grass. English 

 Oalingale. Spikelets linear acute compressed digitato -fasciculate, 

 umbels doubly compound lax or drooping, involucre extremely 

 long leafy, partial ones very small, stem triangular. Sin. E. Fl. 

 i. p. 54. Br. Fl. p. d75. E. B. xix. t. 1309. Bertol. Fl. Ital. i. 

 p. 369. Host. Gram. Aust. iii. 51, t. 76. 



In low wet meadows and pastures and along marshy rivulets, but very rarely. 

 Fl. August— October. Fr. ? 1^. 



E. Med. — In great luxuriance and profusion in a marshy meadow along the 

 stream between the new lighthouse at St. Catherine's (St. Catherine's tower) and 

 Old Castle Point, Puckaster cove, near where it discharges itself into the sea, 

 Sept. 10th, 1839. At Castle mead, Niton, in great plenty, 1844. 



W. Med. — In a wet meadow by the roadside nearly opposite the farm-house at 

 Apes down, but sparingly, Aug. lOlh, 1839. A very small quantity in a meadow 

 below Carisbrooke castle, on the West side, October, 1839. 



Root creeping, of several stout, fleshy, jointed runners, covered with a bright red 

 sheathing epidermis; emitting numerous fibres from the articulations, and termi- 

 nating in white scaly offsets. Culm stout, erect, from 1 to 3 or sometimes above 

 4 feet in height, bright green, solid, smooth, sometimes slightly twisted, with 3 

 rather acute angles, the intermediate faces concave; naked for the greater part of 

 ils length. Leaves 2 or 3 springing from long, close, brownish, striate and reti- 

 culated sheaths on the lower half of the stem, linear, firm and rigid, various in 

 length, longer, shorter than or equalling the_ culm, bright green and shining 

 above, rather glaucous and finely striated beneath, strongly grooved and chan- 

 nelled, with a sharp keel below, and rough-edged chiefly towards the summit, 

 their margins deflexed or a little folded downwards. Involucre usually of 3 very 

 unequal more or less spreading leaves, one of which greatly exceeds the others in 

 length, and is sometimes nearly 2 feet long; within these, and at the base of the 

 umbels, are commonly about as many much smaller leaves. Umbel terminal, 

 twice compounded, of several principal, slender, lax or drooping, compressed and 

 triangular rays, very unequal in length, from 2 or 3 inches to a span or upwards, 

 each enclosed in a short, pale, basal and tubular sheath, toothed or notched at the 

 summit; partial umbels with much shorter rays, that are enclosed in similar 

 sheaths to the principal ones, and having a few linear, leaf-like or scariose bracts 

 at their origin. Spikelets in simple or somewhat branched clusters, ^ an inch in 

 length (or even much more in luxuriant specimens), sessile or shortly pedicellate, 

 linear, very acute, compressed, spreading in a digitate form. Glumes imbricated 

 in 2 rows, obtuse, their colour rich bright chestnut, with a green, sometimes pale, 

 blunt, 3-ribbed keel. Anthers pale yellow. Ovarium oblong. Style linear; 

 stigmas 3. Fruit (hardened corolla) ovate, punctato-striate, at least when green, 

 but I have not seen it ripe. 



The figure in ' English Botany ' was drawn from a garden specimen, and, 

 though referred to for this species by Bertoloni and others, is so dissimilar to the 

 numerous examples I have seen from Kent and this island of Cyperus longus, that 

 I have considerable diflSculty in believing it to be the same plant. In the figure 

 the umbels are represented as quite erect, not at all lax or drooping ; the spikelets 

 far broader, more obtuse and very remote, much fewer in each cluster, all sessile, 

 opposite, and as it were arranged in a pinnated manner, 5 or 7 together. Their 

 colour, too, is a more uniform brown. 



The root of the wild plant with us has merely a faint sweetish odour, and a 

 slightly warm bitterish taste, hardly deserving to be called aromatic^ At St. Ca- 

 therine's Point, however, the plant has a more perceptible sweetness, which, though 

 not powerful, is very diffusible. It is perhaps only in the drier soil of a garden 

 that these qualities are developed in the degree attributed to our species. The 

 entire plant possesses a degree of sweetness which, though faint and transient, 

 is very perceptible in a bundle of the stems when brought into a close roou), or 

 on opening a box containing any quantity of it. Brotero, however, remarks that 



