164 



Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



tion on these wider areas may be gauged from the following 

 list :— 



Station 67. West of Lough Bray, 1900 feet. 3.10.03. 



A smooth expanse of brown, grassy bog, with an almost 

 continuous undergrowth of dwarf Calhma.''^ 



SciRPus c.5:spiTosus. Andromeda Polifolia. 



Callfna yulgaris. Empetrum nigrum. 



Sphagnum spp. JN'akthecium ossifeagtjm. 



Racomiteium lanuginosfm. Eriphorum angustifolium. 



Erica Tetealix. Cladonia rangiferina. 



Amongst these species attention may be called to the presence of 

 Andromeda Polifolia^^ a species rare locally, and confined, so far as our 

 observations go, to this association. Narthecium ossifragum is a very 

 characteristic member, attaining an abundance in this association 

 which it does not find elsewhere. 



All the above plants are perennials. The deciduous leaves and 

 fading stems of Scirpus impart to the association in autumn a char- 

 acteristic golden-brown colour, which is only very slightly influenced 

 by the mixture of the fading leaves of Narthecium and of the small 

 quantity of Eriophorum angustifolium. 



Owing to the accumulation of this fading pUmt-debris and the 

 subsequent growth of the plants through it again, and to the fact that 

 plants like Sphagnum and Racomitrium are constantly dying off below 

 in proportion as they extend their growth above, there is a steady 

 though slow growth upwards in the association as a whole. This is 

 often a well-marked feature, for where the transition from the 

 Calluna to the Scirpus associations is a sharp one, as it not unfrequently 

 is, the Scirpus area is seen to be several feet above the level of the 

 Calluna ground. This comes out, though imperfectly, in our illustra- 

 tion of this association (Plate IX.), where the depressions in the middle 

 foreground and in the left hand top corner are occupied with fairly 

 pure Calluna, whereas the rest of the area is covered with the Scirpus 

 association, mixed, it is true, in this particular case with rather more 

 Eriophorum angustifolium than usual. 



^ Parasitic on the leaves of this plant we found the ascomycete Rhytisma andro- 

 med(B Pers., a fungus hitherto unrecorded, we believe, for the Counties Dublin and 

 Wicklow, or, for that matter, for Ireland. 



