CAREX. 
as remain; and whenever mild weather returns, 
this covering must be removed. Other sowings 
than the March one may be made in the early 
part of April, and thence till the middle of June ; 
and the plants from these must be treated in the 
same manner as those from the March sowing. 
CAREX. A very numerous, prominent, and 
extensively diffused genus of grass-like plants, of 
the cyperacese or sedge tribe. Hight species 
grow wild in England, ten species grow wild in 
Scotland, between forty and fifty species grow 
wild in both England and Scotland; about sixty 
species have been introduced from other countries, 
principally the central and northern regions of 
continental Hurope; and nearly three hundred 
species have been scientifically described. A few 
grow on sandy eminences, heaths, and sea-shores ; 
but most grow in marshes, fens, bogs, watery 
meadows, flooded banks of streams, sides of 
ditches, humid woods, and other moist grounds 
and watery situations. Some intrude, to a con- 
_ siderable degree, among our cultivated herbage- 
plants, and are then annoying and wasteful weeds; 
some frequently mix with the natural grasses, 
and form a coarse portion of the useful sward of 
meadows; some cover extensive tracts of low, 
‘| fenny, alluvial country, and are available partly 
as a very coarse herbage, and partly for various 
economical purposes; and many are mere waste- 
ful occupants of waste lands, either proclaiming 
the hopeless uselessness of the situation in which 
they grow, or indicating the most clamant neces- 
sity for subjecting it to thorough drainage and 
general georgical improvement. ‘They are, in 
| the aggregate, vastly inferior to the grasses in 
the possession of nutritive properties, and are 
almost distinguished for the absence of the fari- 
naceous and saccharine principles in which many 
of the grasses abound; and hence, in even their 
most favourable specimens, they are eaten by cat- 
tle only when the grasses or other nutritious her- 
bage cannot be obtained. Yet many cottiers and 
some poor farmers have recourse to them as fod- 
der, and use them for litter, thatch, and fuel. 
The Laplanders manufacture from some of them 
a flaxy fibre for protecting their feet and hands 
from the rigours of winter; the Italians use some 
for stuffing the crevices of casks, making bottoms 
of chairs, and covering flasks of Florence oil ; and 
the hop-cultivators of Kent use the leaves of 
some of the larger kinds for fastening the vines 
of hops to the poles. 
The roots of probably all the species are per- 
ennial; those of most are creeping; and those of 
a few are tufted and fibrous. The stems of all 
are simple; and those of most are free from knots 
or joints, and have thin, acute, and finely serrated 
angles. Their leaves are linear, flat, pointed, 
roughish in the surface, sharp along the edges, 
tubular and sheathing at the base, and membra- 
naceous, often auricled, at the summit; and the 
upper ones assume the character of bracts. 
Almost all seed freely, and in consequence are 
I 
ee 
CARICA. 699 
facilely propagated; yet the upper spikes of all 
consist only of male flowers, and never produce 
seeds; and their invariable want of fruitfulness 
is alluded to in the name of the genus, which is 
derived from the Latin word carere, ‘to want.’ 
Two of the British species, having a height of 
from six to ten inches, are dicecious, and have 
solitary spikes; thirteen, having a height of from | 
six inches to a yard, have their spikelets spiked, 
and are many-flowered ; two have panicled spike- 
lets; one has a racemose spikelet ; and the others 
possess some other equally distinctive characters, 
which render them easily recognisable from one 
another, and occasion the whole to be classifiable 
into eleven or twelve groups. “C. remota,” says 
Loudon, in his Encyclopedia of Plants, “is a 
very elegant plant. C. paniculata grows in bogs || 
in immense tufts, making a firm support for the | 
heaviest bodies. C. Fraseri is the handsomest 
species of the genus, resembling at a short dis- 
tance, when in flower, one of the liliacex. C. ri- 
paria has leaves half an inch wide, and from one to 
three feet long. C. arenaria increases rapidly in 
loose sand, and is sometimes planted with a view 
of fixing soils of this description, along with ely- 
mus and arundo.” 
CAREYA. A small genus of very beautiful, 
evergreen, East Indian plants, of the myrtle 
tribe. It is named after its discoverer, Dr. Wil- | 
liam Carey of Serampore, the editor of Rox- | 
burgh’s Flora Indica, The herbaceous species | 
has a height of only about six or eight inches; it 
carries a splendid flower, with long red stamens, 
in July and August ; and it was introduced to 
Britain in 1808. The spherical and the tree 
Species are arborescent, and have a height of | 
respectively three feet and ten feet, and were | 
brought to Britain in 1823. 
CARICA. A genus of ornamental, fructiferous, | 
evergreen, tropical trees, of the Linnzan class 
dicecia, and order decandria. Its proper natural 
place is probably in close juxtaposition to the | 
nettle tribe, but is a subject of much dispute | 
among botanists; and the genus was placed by 
Linnzeus among the tricocce, by Richard among | 
the passifloree, and by Jussieu, but not by De 
Candolle, among the cucurbitacee. The name | 
carica is an erroneous allusion to Caria, as the 
supposed native country of the best known spe- 
cies ; and it was proposed by Jussieu to be changed | 
to papaya.—The common or papaw-tree species, 
Carica papaya, isa native of India and of South 
America, and was introduced to Britain, from | 
the former of these countries, toward the close of | 
the seventeenth century. Its stem is upright, | 
unbranched, rapid in growth, and from fourteen | 
to twenty feet in height ; its foliage is large, and | 
confined to the top of the tree, and gives the 
plant an appearance somewhat like that of a 
palm ; its flowers have a yellowish-white or green- 
ish colour,—and when the corolla falls, the ger- 
men, in growing to maturity, becomes pendent; | 
its fruit is a large oblong berry or papo, nearly 
— et 
