FERNALD, —- CARICES OF SECTION HYPARRHENAE. 451 
restoring to specific rank C. festweacea, has included in it Dewey’s C. 
straminea, var. brevior, and in the Illustrated Flora he figures the 
latter plant under the former name. But the late Dr. Eliot C. Howe, 
in his admirable treatment of the New York Species of Carex, has 
recognized both plants, thus following the general treatment of Francis 
Boott and other earlier writers and at the same time clearing the names 
Jestucacea and brevior from the confusion which has recently surrounded 
them. 
Carex foenea, var. 8 of Boott has had a peculiarly unsettled history. 
When Francis Boott described and figured the plant as a variety of C. 
Joenea, the latter name applied to C. albolutescens, Schweinitz, not to 
the true C. foenea of Willdenow. It was Boott’s opinion, then, that 
the slender brown-spiked plant of the interior was a phase of what we 
now know without much doubt to be C. albolutescens. In the fifth 
edition of the Manual Dr. Gray took up C. foenea, var. B as C. foenea, 
var. (?) ferruginea; and later the plant was distributed by Olney as a 
variety of Dewey’s C. tenera (C. straminea, var. aperta, Boott). In his 
Preliminary Synopsis in 1886, Professor Bailey reduced it to synonymy 
under ©. straminea, Schkuhr (not Willd.), and later in his Critical 
Studies of Types he treated this plant along with O. festucacea, Schkuhr, 
and C. straminea, var. Crawei, Boott (C. Bicknellii, Britton) as iden- 
tical with C. straminea, var. brevior, Dewey (C. straminea, Schkuhr, 
not Willd.). Subsequently, however, he has taken out of his C. stra- 
minea, var. brevior, two plants, which he treats as parallel varieties, 
var. Crawet, Boott, and var. ferruginea (C. foenea, var. 8, Boott); and at 
the same time he has discussed as a species C. albolutescens, Schweinitz 
(C. foenea of authors, not Willd.). This course has greatly cleared 
the group from its former confusion; but it is unfortunate that while 
separating C. albolutescens specifically Professor Bailey should have 
attached C. foenea, var. B to the slender usually flexuous-spiked C. 
straminea, whose identity he had already so carefully worked out. C. 
Joenea, var. B in its stiff habit, its strongly appressed broad-ovate peri- 
gynia, and the texture of its leaf-sheaths, is quite unlike that species, 
but is very close to C. albolutescens with which it had been placed by 
Francis Boott. - In these characters, likewise, it is equally close to C. 
alata, Torr., while its perigynia and the occasional awn-tips of the scales 
are so like those of the latter species as to place it nearer to that than 
to the former plant. 
The two species, Carex foenea, Willd., and C. adusta, Boott, have 
already been discussed and very clearly settled by Professor Bai- 
