ERIOPHORUM capitatum.
Hound-headed, Cotton-grass.
H
TRIANDRIA Monogynia.
G en. Char. Glumes chaffy, im bricated on all sides.
Cor. n on e. Seed 1, invested w ith very lo n g hairs.
Spec. C h a r . Stem round to the sum m it, invested w ith
a tubular sheath. Spike solitary, roundish.
G lum es m em branous.
Sy n . E riop h orum capitatum . Host. Gram.v. 1. 30.
t. 3 8 . Schrad. Germ. v. 1. 151.
E . S ch eu ch zeri. Roth in Sims and König’s Annals
of Botany, v. 1. 149.
J u n cu s alp in u s, cap itu lo tom entoso majori.
Scheuchz. Agrost. 304 . Prodr. 27. t.7.
D i s c o v e r e d by Mr. Geo. Don August 12, 1810, by the
side of a rivulet on Ben Lawers, near the limits of perpetual
snow. The plants were rooted in a sand-bank, and appeared
to have been brought by alpine torrents from some still more
inaccessible part of the mountain. His specimen agrees exactly
with those sent by Professor Schrader and from Switzerland,
and is doubtless Scheuchzer’s plant.
This differs from E . vaginatum, t. 873, in having a more
widely creeping root, which throws up here and there tufts of
shorter and thicker leaves, channelled above, convex beneath,
with a solitary stem, about a span high, remarkably straight,
round to the very top, and much thicker, as well as shorter,
than that of E . vaginatum, whose upper part is triangular,
though the rest is round. The spike is round, not ovate or oblong.
Sometimes the outer glume is broad, and looks like a
sheath, but that is not the case in our only Scottish specimen.
This is unquestionably a most distinct species.