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ENGELMANN—NORTH AM. SPECIES OF JUNCUS. 457 
is it, then, at all probable that Meyer himself should have 
done so in his own herbarium? His original specimens 
may not have exhibited the foliaceous excrescences, so that 
he could not mention them in his description of this species, 
while he did allude to similar ones in his account of his tT. pa¬ 
radoxus-, his diagnosis is so short that he does not even 
mention the unusually small number of flowers. 
The rhizoma is whitish and slender, often almost filiform, 
and sends out few and distant, or sometimes more crowded, 
slender and almost terete, not flattened, stems, 4 or 6 to 18 or 
20 inches high; leaves slender, almost setaceous, scarcely 
compressed, and incompletely knotted. The panicle shows 
very different forms in different specimens; sometimes, prob¬ 
ably in the earlier part of the season, it is only 2 or 8 inches 
long, and moderately spreading, with flowers more crowded; 
but usually, at least in the numerous herbarium specimens 
examined by me, and perhaps later in the season, it attains a 
length of 4 or 6 inches, with about the same diameter, the 
few slender spreading or recurved branches bearing the dis¬ 
tant flowers on one side. The flowers are green, with a 
reddish tinge, especially on the inner sepals, usually 1.0-1.3 
lines long, and generally single; sepals obtuse, sometimes 
mucronate, or, rarely, the outer ones acutish; these are gene¬ 
rally shorter than the inner ones; but in a Lake Superior 
specimen the flowers are only 0.8 line long, and all the sepals 
equal, broadly oval and obtuse. Stamens about the length 
of the outer sepals, anthers always longer than filaments, 
sometimes scarcely twice as long, in others fully four times 
their length. Style shorter than the acuminate ovary. The 
capsule ought not to have been described as Meyer and 
(copying him) La Harpe did, as triquetro-ovata mucronata; 
it is rather, as Gray has it, taper beaked, and is completely 
one-celled, the lateral placentae occupying only the lowest 
third or fourth part of the commissure of the valves. Seeds 
0.25 line long, delicately but distinctly reticulate, areae trans¬ 
versely lineolate. 
I cannot distinguish Dr. Chapman’s J. abortivus from the 
northern plant except by the not essential characters given 
above; the flowers are absolutely identical, and fruit I have 
not seen. 
With some hesitation I add J. subtilis as a procumbent or 
floating variety with short internodes, and short leaves which 
bear leaf-buds in their axils. In American collections this 
form does not seem to exist, but La Harpe, who saw it in 
Michaux’s herbarium in Paris, gives a full description of it, 
from which I have extracted above ; the flowers are described 
exactly like those of J. pelocarpus , and there is, notwithstand¬ 
ing the different habit, nothing in it that would specifically 
distinguish it, except the smaller number of stamens, and the 
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