T. Holm — Studies in the Cyperacece. 277 



While thus the Stenocarpm represent a very natural little 

 group of Carices in respect to their external, morphological, 

 characters, we have, furthermore, examined the anatomy of 

 some of these species, which seems to be very uniform. 

 Whether uniformity in anatomy, however, may be considered 

 as being an absolute necessity for the establishment of sections 

 of Carices to which morphological peculiarities are in com- 

 mon, is by no means certain. We will, no doubt, meet with 

 many exceptions by extending our studies to several of the 

 other and larger sections, as for instance the Melananthce and 

 Microrhynchce, the members of which exhibit so many diverse 

 types from the extreme north and south, and living under very 

 different conditions as to climate and soil. It is, also, very 

 possible that several of the smaller sections may be found to 

 possess a like structure in anatomical respects, yet being appar- 

 ently distinct when considered from a morphological view- 

 point. This is readily noticed from the literature on this sub- 

 ject, the works of Mazel and Lemcke. The former of these 

 authors has examined the structure of the root, the stem and 

 the leaf of 43 species of Carex, nearly all from Europe, and 

 his final conclusion is thus expressed : " On ne peut en aucun 

 cas se baser sur des caracteres anatomiques pour grouper sys- 

 tematiquement les especes dans le genre Ccurex" / yet it does 

 not seem as if this author has made any attempt to deduct 

 a classification from his anatomical results. The other author, 

 Alfred Lemcke, who has examined the rhizome and the above- 

 ground stem of about 160 species of Carex from Europe and 

 this country, believes, on the contrary, in the possibility of classi- 

 fying Carices from the structure of their rhizomes, and con- 

 siders Dr. Christ's system as the most practical for this purpose. 

 The Frigidoe, Fr. including C. mucronata All. are, thus, con- 

 sidered as being closely related to each other, while we find 

 C. circinata enumerated under Psyllophorm among such 

 species as : C gy?iocrates, C. capitata, C. polytrichoides and 

 even C. Fraseri. However we doubt very much whether 

 any conclusion may be drawn from the structure of the 

 rhizome alone or from the stem so as to establish sections or 

 smaller groups of Carices. Nevertheless the works of these 

 two authors constitute a valuable contribution to our knowl- 

 edge of the anatomy of Carex, even if their results do not 

 bear directly upon the classification. 



In regard to our Stenoca r rpcB we are, thus, well aware of the 

 possibility that the anatomical characterization which we 

 present as supplemental to the morphological, may also con- 

 tain several points that are common to some of the other sec- 

 tions. These anatomical notes may, nevertheless, become 

 useful to further studies of the genus, at least as a contribution 



