1^21. 



Stelfox — A^ofc on Cuj :x muyicala L 



31 



NOTE ON CAREX MURICATA L. AND ITS 

 SEGREGATES C. CONTIGUA HOPPE 

 AND C. PAIRAEI SCHULTZ. 



BY A. W. STELFOX, 



Car ex muricata of Linne appears nowadays to be generally 

 regarded as a composite species, and in England it is the 

 custom to refer plants to one or other of its segregates 

 contigua or Pairaei. So far as I know, the only Irish re- 

 ferences to either of these species are by R. LI. Praeger (in 

 " Flora of the West of Ireland ") and R. W. Scully (in 

 " Flora of Kerry "), where all " muricata " records are re- 

 ferred to contigua, and it seems to have been inferred that 

 Pairaei is absent from Ireland. My attention was first 

 drawn to the latter by an English correspondent — Mr. 

 Norman G. Hadden — about a couple of years ago. At that 

 time the form of " muricata " recorded from the Belfast 

 district (Co. Antrim) was the only one known to me, and 

 this Hadden named typical contigua, at the same time 

 sending me a specimen of Pairaei for comparison, together 

 wdth notes on its habits and characters in which it differed 

 from contigua. During last August I searched for and found 

 Dr. Scully's station for " muricata " near Sandyford, Co. 

 Dublin (see Irish Nat., xxviii., 90, 19 19), and was at once 

 struck by the resemblance of this plant to Hadden 's speci- 

 men of Pairaei. Several authorities have since verified 

 specimens from this locality as imdoubtedly Pairaei, in- 

 cluding Messrs. Arthur Bennett, C. E. Salmon and H. Stewart 

 Thompson, so that it is now possible definitely to add 

 Pairaei to the list of Irish sedges. 



C. Pairaei is stated to prefer dry, sandy situations, just 

 such as that near Sandyford, where it grows on a dry bank 

 built of granite boulders and sods of sandy earth. C. 

 contigita, on the other hand, is more often found in damper, 

 richer ground, but the two species have been reported to 

 grow in association in England ; and I can assert that 

 contigua has not lost any of its characters through being 

 grown in a dry spot in my garden. 



