FERNALD. — ELEOCHARIS OVATA. 489 
between the two. This low form, more common in New England than 
the typical erect Z. ovata, is doubtless the Silesian variety Heuseri of 
Uechtritz. From the description alone of Terracciano’s var. humifusa, 
our plant may be the same as that Italian form. No specimens of the 
latter have been seen, and as the New England plant is clearly identi- 
cal with the more northern var. Heuseri, Uechtritz, that name will here 
be taken up. 
This flexuous dark-headed plant is not the only anomalous form long 
referred to Eleocharis ovata, A tall northwestern plant, 7 or 8 dm. high, 
as been considered by Mr. C. B. Clarke as a variety of this species. 
Aside from its unusual size, this plant is well characterized by the re- 
markable broadly obcordate tubercle (Figs. 11, 12), which is not at all 
compressed and fully half as high as the achene itself. Other north- 
western plants, however, connect this extreme form directly with the 
typical H. obtusa, so that it seems undoubtedly an extreme variety of 
that species. Another striking form which an abundance of material 
Shows to be in reality an extreme variation of E. obtusa is a slender 
somewhat depressed plant. of the east. This plant (Figs. 13, 14), with 
capillary erect or generally decumbent or spreading culms mostly a deci- 
meter or less (very rarely 2 dm.) high, is frequent in damp sand or in 
exsiccated places in New England and other eastern States. ‘The short 
few-flowered heads are from 2 to 5 mm. long, and the oblong obtuse scales 
are slightly more spreading than in the true Z. obtusa. The achenes, how- 
ever, though a little smaller, are not distinguishable from those of that 
Species, and occasional specimens occur which might equally well be 
referred to either form of the plant. For this reason, although the plant 
With capillary short culms seems habitually very distinct, it is here treated 
a8 a variety of ZL. obtusa. The smaller achenes of this low plant are about 
as high as those of the European £. ovata, but they are readily distin- 
guished from that species by their greater breadth and by their tubercles. 
me other plants which have been associated in our herbaria with 
eocharis ovata apparently have less affinity with that species. Z. dian- 
dr % Charles Wright (Figs. 53 to 58), has already been briefly discussed. 
Prior to publishing the species himself, Mr. Wright sent specimens to Dr. 
Gray who then considered the plant a “ pretty good species,” and gave it 
® provisional (though never published) name in the herbarium. In 1883 
r. Wright described his plant, distinguishing it by a number of appar- 
ently constant characters from Z. obtusa. In his “Genus Eleocharis in 
North America,” however, Dr. Britton treated the plant as a probable 
form of the older species (“ovata”). In the subsequent edition of Gray’s 
