426 
TRANS. OF THE ACAD. OF SCIENCE. 
that in some species, at least, soil and moisture have a most 
important influence on them, as they also have on the devel¬ 
opment of the inflorescence; the overgrown forms of J. 
scirpoides , as I understand that species, have large, laterally 
compressed, gladiate leaves, while in the forms grown on 
drier and poorer soil the leaves become almost or entirely 
terete. On the other hand, the peculiar tribe of articulate 
Junci of the Pacific slope, which I have called Ensifolii 
from their characteristic sword-shaped leaves, exhibits, in i * 
alpine situations, such narrow leaves that they might inad¬ 
vertently be mistaken for terete ones. 
Inflorescence.— The inflorescence offers us important but, 
to a surprisingly great extent, variable characters. All Junci 
have, as is well known, a terminal inflorescence, even where 
it is seemingly lateral. In the Californian sub-genus Jun - 
cellus , and in a few South American and antarctic species 
which form the sub-genus Rostkovia (gen. Rostkovia , Hook, 
f., Rostkovia , Desv., and Marsippospermum, Desv., in part), 
a single flower terminates the stem or scape; but all the true 
Junci have a more or less compound inflorescence of single 
flowers or of flowers crowded into larger or smaller heads. 
In the inflorescence we observe numerous bracts, usually 
of a membranaceous texture; the uppermost bracts bear in 
their axils the flowers, which are always lateral, though in ^ 
the species with single flowers they appear terminal. In 
these the lower of the two highest bracts, which are always 
found at the base of the flower and which were therefore 
termed “ calyx” by Rostkovius, bears the flower in its axil, 
the upper one remaining sterile; but the trace of an axillary 
product, an abortive flower or a leaf-bud, ought occasionally 
to be found, as is regularly the case in J. pelocarpus. In the 
single flowered forms of this species the uppermost bract 
usually bears an abortive bud, or this bud grows out into a 
leafy branch, or it becomes a second flower; and then a third 
bract is formed, often again with a leaf-bud, but never, so far 
as I know, with a third flower. Thus we have the complete 
transition from the single flowered to the species in which 
the flowers are grouped into heads. In these each bract 
bears in its axil a flower in centripetal succession, the upper- 
most minute bracts remaining sterile in the center of the ^ 4 
head. 
The single flowered Junci bear panicles, or, as E. Meyer 
and many botanists after him called them, anthelce , of differ¬ 
ent form and development. In some species ( e . g. in the 
common forms of J. tenuis and J. dichotomus) the panicle 
has often the shape of an almost regularly dichotomous cyme, 
or at least the main branches are dichotomously divided; in 
most other species this regularity is considerably obscured 
by the development of many elongated branches from a short 
