’ 
FERNALD. — CARICES OF SECTION- HYPARRHENAE. 453 
From the former species it differs constantly in its more slender habit 
and flexuous elongated spikes of clavate-based spikelets, as well as in 
smaller achenes. It is a plant of broad range from Labrador to British 
Columbia, creeping south to the coast of New England and the mountains 
of New England and New York. Since its varietal name, sparsiflora, — 
is preoccupied in the genus, another specific name is here proposed in 
reference to the characteristic color of the mature inflorescence. 
The other large group of the Hyparrhenae which has been treated 
by recent authors as the subsection Hlongatae contains plants of two 
markedly different tendencies. One group is characterized by strongly 
divergent thin-edged perigynia which are spongy at base. The other 
group has ascending plump or plano-convex perigynia which are rarely 
thin-edged and are without conspicuously spongy bases. Mr. Theodor 
Holm, who has recently studied some of the members of the first group, 
includes with them Carex gynocrates and C. exilis, which by most other 
authors have been placed in the Déioteae. The texture and aspect of 
the perigynia seem to justify the treatment proposed by Mr. Holm and 
formerly for C. exilis by Francis Boott;' and for the group thus con- 
stituted Mr. Holm suggests the name Astrostachyae.? The other group, 
with ascending blunt-edged perigynia, may well retain the subsectional 
name Hlongatae, since the characteristic species, C. elongata, C. brunne- 
scens (O. Gebhardii), CO. canescens (C. curta), etc., were originally 
included in it by Kunth. 
Mr. Holm, in the paper cited, takes exception® to Professor Bailey’s 
recent treatment* of Carex echinata, C. sterilis, and C. seirpoides, on 
the ground that that author had been more controlled by the original 
specimens of Willdenow and of Schkuhr than by the original diagnoses. 
That Willdenow’s original descriptions do not accord well with Pro- 
fessor Bailey’s conclusions there can be no doubt; and when we are 
told by Professor Bailey that C. sterilis and C. scirpotdes are identical, 
and when he says “the figures of both C. sterilis (fig. 146) and C. seir- 
potdes (fig. 180) in Schkuhr’s ‘ Riedgriiser’ are unequivocal,”® we find 
it indeed difficult to understand his observations. An examination of 
Schkuhr’s figures shows his C. sterilis (fig. 146) to be a coarse plant 
With sharp-pointed ovate scales and broad-ovate cordate perigynia with 
distinct beak shorter than the body. Schkuhr’s ©. seirpoides (fig. 180), 
on the other hand, is represented with broad-oblong or elliptical blunt 
 Boott, Ill, I. 17. 2 Holm, Theo., Am. Jour. Sci., Ser. 4, XI. 205-223. 
® Holm, 1. C., 212: 4 Bailey, Bull. Torr. Cl., XX. 422. 
5 Bailey, 1. c., 424. 
