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C A R E X , tomentosa.
Downy-fruitecl Carex.
MOAOECIA Triandria.
Gen. Char. Male, Catkin imbricated. Cal. of one
scale. Cor. none. Female, Catkin imbricated.
Cal. of one scale. Cor. none. Stigmas 2 or 3.
Seed clothed with a swelling tunic.
Spec. Char. Sheaths extremely short. Female spikes
nearly sessile, cylindrical, obtuse. Glumes elliptical,
acute. Fruit downy.
Syn. Carex tomentosa. Linn. Mant. ] 23. Sm. FI.
Brit. 996. 1 r. o f Linn. Soc. v. 5. 269. Leers.
200. t. 1,5.f . 1. Dicks. Dr. PI. 43.
T h e late Mr. Robert Teesdale, F.L.S., a most acute and indefatigable
British botanist, is the only person, to the best of
our knowledge, who ever gathered this species of Carex in
Bntam. He found it, flowering in June, in meadows near
Merstone Measey, Wiltshire, in 1799, -and thus its name is
restored to the list of British plants, from which it had been
erased since the learned Bishop of Carlisle discovered the
C. tomentosa of Lightfoot and Hudson to be the Linnsean
jiliformis.
The root creeps, with long and compound fibres. The
stems are a foot or more in height, erect, naked, with three
sharp angles rough upwards. Leaves shorter than the stem
upright, flat, grass-green, rough on both sides and at the
edges. Bracteas leafy, rather spreading, the longest rising
somewhat above the stem, with scarcely any sheath. Male spike
lanceolate, bluntish, with lanceolate, rusty scales having green
keels, the upper ones occasionally pointed. Female spikes
usually two, not very distant, almost sessile, cylindrical,
blunt, various in length, their glumes elliptic-ovate, slightly
pointed, rusty with broad green keels. Fruit about as long
as the scales, crowded, roundish, scarcely at all compressed
and but slightly triangular^ green clothed with short dense
whitish down, which turns tawny by long keeping. The
beak is short and cloven. Seed pale, obscurely triangular.