E. A. PEYOE—HEETEOEDSHIEE CAEICES. 
127 
part of the stem, with the lowest hract considerably longer, and 
generally reaching the male spikelet; in the female spikelets being 
fewer, with glumes^ of a lighter colour, and proportionally 
narrower and more inclined to be acute ; in the spreading perigynia 
of a lighter and yellower tint with a rougher beak,f which is 
devoid of the scarious membrane at the orifice; and in the male 
spikelet being more slender and of a lighter colour, but, as observed 
by Hoppe, far more dense, so that the glumes are with difficulty 
separated. Its nearest ally seems to be C. lepidocarpa.% 
On the other hand, C. Hornschuchiana has a more branched root- 
stock and scattered mode of growth, with the herbage shorter, 
more scanty, and of a darker, duller green; the stem is smooth and 
wiry; the bracts shorter; the female spikelets darker, longer, and 
much more distant, with broader ovate glumes with a wide scarious 
margin; the perigynia are of a fuller green when young, and when 
mature have a conspicuous white membrane at the orifice; the 
glumes of the male spikelet are laxer; it has altogether much of 
the habit and general appearance of C. distans. It usually repre¬ 
sents C. fulva in our herbaria. § 
While C. Hornschuchiana has been almost universally recognised 
on the Continent as possessing undoubted claims to the rank of an 
independent series, there have been various opinions as to the 
exact grade and position of C. xanthocarpa. The names fulvo-jlava 
and flavo-Hornschuchiana applied at different times by F. Schultz 
will speak for themselves. || By Godron^f it was reckoned as a 
hybrid between C. distans and C. Hornschuchiana ; and more 
recently M. Grenier in his ‘Flore de la Chaine Jurassique,’ while 
denying the possibility of its being a hybrid derived from C. 
Hornschuchiana , on account of its frequent occurrence in localities 
from which the supposed parent is entirely absent (an argument 
which applies with equal force in the case of the Hertfordshire 
plant), has reduced it to C. flava as a merely sterile variety, and 
has stated that on one occasion he found on the same spikelet every 
intermediate form of perigynium between that of the ordinary flava 
and that of the present plant. Should this prove to be universally 
the case, the opinion of M. Grenier would coincide in a remarkable 
manner with that of Goodenough. M. Duval, who claims to have 
observed the sterile forms of C. (Ederi , flava , distans , and Horn¬ 
schuchiana , attributed their occurrence to the effects of the late 
* The difference of shape in the glumes is well shown in Beichenbach’s figures 
(‘Icon.,’ vol. viii, No. 620, 621). 
t The beak is more slender than that represented in ‘ English Botany,’ 1295. 
f Hoppe, however, considers that C. “fulva” and flava scarcely resemble 
each other except in the very long bracts which extend beyond the stalk. He 
may have had only the typical flava in view. 
§ Schultz (‘Flora,’ 1854, p. 471) mentions that all his English specimens of 
C. fulva belonged to Hornschuchiana. 
I| Dr. Boswell considers his C. fulva, var. sterilis, “ a very remarkable plant, 
of which” he “had seen no British specimens,” to be a hybrid between C. fulv a 
( Hornschuchiana ) and flava. He refers it to the C. fulva of Koch = 6\ xantho- 
carpa , Degl. 
TI ‘ These sur l’Hybridite,’ p. 21. 
