428 
TRANS. OP THE ACAD. OF SCIENCE. 
the sub-genus Juncellus , I find each circle consisting of two 
parts only, a curious and rare arrangement in a monocotyl- 
edonous plant. 
In place of flowers we find, in some species with articulate 
leaves, leafy buds or shoots as the result of retrograde meta¬ 
morphosis, or as the morbid product of the oviposition of the 
JLivia Juncorum or some allied insect. They are most com¬ 
mon in J. pelocarpus, which, from this peculiarity, has been 
named viviparus and abortivus; in J. pallescens.y^v. fra- 
ternus , which therefore got the name J. paradoxus , and in J. 
nodosus genuinus. 
Sepals. —The always persistent sepals furnish important 
characteristics. The exterior and interior ones are sometimes 
similar but more frequently dissimilar; the former usually 
carinate or naviculate, more herbaceous, more strongly ribbed 
and sharper pointed; the latter more delicate, with a wider 
membranaceous margin, flat or slightly concave but not navic¬ 
ulate, and more frequently obtuse or only mucronate, but more 
variable in their outline than the exterior ones. Both sets 
of sepals are either equal in length or one exceeds the other, 
but neither their proportion nor the form of the inner sepals 
offer perfectly reliable characters in all species; in some they 
are more constant, while in others they vary considerably. 
In examining dried, and even living, specimens, the error of 
mistaking an involute sepal for an acute one must be avoided, 
an error into which even careful botanists have sometimes 
fallen. The nerves of the sepals, which are of such diagnostic 
importance in Graminece and even Cyperaceaz , are of minor 
value in Junci , as they vary considerably in different forms 
of the same species. 
Stamens. —E. Meyer had already paid attention to the 
number of stamens and their proportion, and in many species 
valuable characters are derived from them, but they alone 
cannot constitute specific distinction. They are generally 
persistent, which permits us to examine them in all stages of 
development of the flower and fruit; only in J. Smithii and 
in J. Bcemerianus the anthers fall away early and the filaments 
only persist. The number of stamens is normally six, but in 
many, principally American, species, it is, by suppression of 
the inner circle, reduced to three; those three stamens stand, 
therefore, before the outer sepals and at the angles of the 
ovary or capsule. We have only two species in which their 
number regularly varies between three and six, J. JBuckleyi 
and J. caudatus; in them the inner circle of stamens is in¬ 
completely present. In many tri-androus species we find 
occasionally a fourth or fifth stamen, and that often smaller 
than the rest; but where both circles are regularly developed 
I have never seen them unequal in size or shape, which we 
notice so often in other allied families. 
