450 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 
thicker perigynia it is more nearly related to C. straminea and its 
allies. So, likewise, C. cristata, Schwein., is reinstated as a species, 
since its tolerably constant habit and its shorter, firmer perigynia place 
it as near C. straminea as to C. tribuloides. 
The diverse plants which have been treated by various authors, now 
as distinct species, now as forms of Carex straminea, fall into groups 
which are, in the main, fairly free from complexity. The attempt to 
separate these forms by, color-characters has naturally led to much con- 
fusion, for plants which in bright sunlight have a strongly marked 
ferrugineous tendency, in shade are often quite green. The shape, size, 
nerving, and texture of the perigynia, however, show that almost with- 
out exception the species proposed by Willdenow, Schkuhr, Torrey, 
Schweinitz, Dewey, and other early students of the group were based on 
permanent characters. To treat all these well marked and constant 
forms as varieties of one species is adding confusion rather than clearness 
to our interpretation of the genus, especially when several of them are 
as closely related to other well recognized species. 
The identity of Willdenow’s Carex straminea was settled by Professor 
Bailey! in 1889, and a recent examination of Willdenow’s material by 
Dr. J. M. Greenman has verified Professor Bailey’s conclusions. ©. 
albolutescens, Schweinitz, is now well understood, as are likewise C- 
mirabilis, Dewey, C. tenera, Dewey, C. Bicknellii, Britton (C. straminea, 
var. Crawei, Boott), and C. alata, Torrey. But C. festucacea, Schkuhr, 
C. straminea, var. brevior, Dewey, and C. foenea, var. B, Boott, seem 
to have been less clearly understood. 
Schkuhr’s Carex festucacea, according to the original description, was 
a plant with about eight spikelets subapproximate or in a loosely 
cylindric spike, and the species is so represented in Schkuhr’s figure. It 
is likewise well represented by Dr. Boott, who apparently had a clear 
conception of the species, in his table 386. Schkuhr’s C. stramined, 
which we now know to be different from Willdenow’s plant of that name, 
was an extreme form of C. festucacea with fewer spikelets, and until 
recently it passed as the type of the species; i. e., C. straminea (typica) 
of Boott and others. This plant, however, was called by Dewey 
straminea, var. brevior, and under that name it has heen treated by 
Professor Bailey. He includes with it, though, the ©. festucacea of 
Schkuhr, a plant which, though closely related, is of rather mark 
appearance and of more limited range. More recently Dr. Britton, in 
es 
1 Mem. Torr. Cl., I. 21. 
