498 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
II.— SCIRPUS ERIOPHORUM AND SOME RELATED FORMS. 
In July, 1891, while collecting in the Saco valley about Cornish, Maine, 
I was puzzled by a strange “ wool-grass” which there abounded in the 
low thickets and meadows. Eventually, however, the plant was con- 
signed, with some other very different forms, to the one place provided 
for it in the American manuals — Seirpus Eriophorum, Michx. (Hrio- 
phorum eyperinum, L.). Again in 1896, my attention was called by Mr. 
J. C. Parlin to another “ wool-grass” in southern Maine, which in size, 
color, and fruiting season was very unlike the common species of north- 
ern New England; and more recently Messrs. Luman Andrews and 
Chas. H. Bissell have made careful field-notes about Southington, Con- 
necticut, on three very dissimilar plants, all of which we must call, if we 
adhere to the present treatment of the group, Scirpus Eriophorum. 
Two other forms, one from Maine and Massachusetts, the other from we 
southeastern and Gulf States, have been associated with this species, 
which, as now made up, includes six readily distinguished forms. 
Linnzus described Hriophorum cyperinum* in 1762, basing it upon 
earlier descriptions of Rai,? Plukenet,? and Gronovius.* The La 
species is a well known plant of eastern America, rather stout, the invo- 
lucre ferruginous at base, and the small ovoid ferruginous spikelets 
clustered in glomerules. Uncommon in northern New England, it 
becomes abundant southward, extending at least to Kentucky. 
In 1803, Michaux described as Scirpus Eriophorum® a southern plant 
(from Virginia to Georgia), and supposing it to be the same as the Lad 
nean Eriophorum cyperinum, he transferred to it the latter spect 
Michaux’s plant, however, though apparently an extreme form of m8 
Linnean species, has the spikelets nearly all distinctly pedicelled, and : 
is a form of more southern range than the Linnean plant. During the 
present century these plants have been variously treated, as 4 wee 
species or as varietally distinct, under Scirpus or Eriophorum, wane 
Persoon even as part of a separate genus, 7'ricophorum.® Ordinar! ; 
Michaux’s disposition of the plant as a Scirpus has been accepted, an% 
although the plant somewhat approaches species of Hriophorum, "8 
1D. Spee. ed. 2, 77. 2 Rai, Suppl. 620. 3 Pluk. Mant. 62, t. 419, f. 3 
* Gronov. Virg. 11. 5 Michx. FI. i. 33. 6 Pers. Syn. i. 69 
