FERNALD, — ELEOCHARIS OVATA. 487 
and they are both annuals with small tufts of merely fibrous roots. Both 
Eleocharis palustris and E, olivacea, on the other hand, are well known, 
and are always described as perennials with definite root-stocks. Another 
Massachusetts specimen, collected by C. E. Perkins at Winchester, soon 
after Mr. Hitchings found the puzzling Dedham plant, has likewise been 
referred to both E. obtusa and E. olivacea, and doubtfully to £. diandra. 
In attempting, then, to place satisfactorily this anomalous plant, recent 
botanists have associated it at different times with no less than five 
species, 
The plant is probably of general, though perhaps not of abundant, 
distribution throughout eastern Massachusetts. In the middle of October, 
1897, a small plant, which may well be a depauperate form of the Ded- 
ham plant, was collected by E. F. Williams and J. M. Greenman at 
Massapoag Pond in Sharon. Exceptional individuals among these 
autumnal specimens have short capillary stolons, but, except for this 
unusual development, they can hardly be distinguished from the smallest 
specimens collected by Mr. Hitchings. A little later, specimens identical 
with the larger Dedham plant were collected by Mr. Williams in the bog 
south of Annursnack Hill in Concord. 
In northern Maine, on the upper waters of the St. John and Penobscot 
Rivers, where Eleocharis palustris and E. intermedia are common species, 
this Dedham plant is also abundant. There it has been carefully watched 
in the field, where it forms dense tufts of generally slender and decidedly 
flexuous culms, which are often quite prostrate upon the ground, giving 
the plant a superficial resemblance to EZ. intermedia. From the gener- 
ally common Z. obtusa, whose place this slender flexuous plant (Figs. 15 
to 22) seems to take in northern Maine, it is otherwise superficially distin- 
guished by its dark chestnut or purple ovate or ovate-lanceolate acutish 
scales, which are looser in the heads and more spreading than the paler 
brown ascending closely appressed obovate obovate-oblong or suborbicu- 
lar blunt scales of E. obtusa. The color of the scales, though fairly 
constant, is not, however, so distinctive a character of the Dedham 
and northern Maine plant as the size and shape of the tubercle. The 
tubercle of this dark-scaled plant is deltoid-conical, slightly or not at all 
constricted at the base, suggesting in outline a half-closed parasol with 
Incurved edge; it is about three fifths as wide as the obovate or inverted- 
Pyriform achene which it caps, and usually about three sevenths as high 
as the body of the achene. The tubercle of Z. obtusa, on the other hand, 
a already described, is usually as broad as the cuneate-obovate achene, and 
it is depressed and generally one third as high as the body of the achene. 
