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C A R E X Davalliana.
P r ick ly Separate-headed Carer.
MONOECIA Triandria.
G en . Char. Male, Catkin imbricated. Cal. of one
scale. Car. none. Female, Catkin imbricated.
Cal. o f one scale. Cor. none. Stigmas 2 or 3.
Seed clothed with a swelling tunic.
Spec. Char. Spikes simple, dioecious. Fruit lanceolate,
triangular, ribbed, deflexed ; its angles rough
towards the summit.
Synt. Carex Davalliana. Sm. Tr. o f L . Soc. v. 5. 266.
FI. Brit. 964. Hull. ed. 2. 268. Willd. Sp. PL
v. 4. 208.
C. dioica /3. Sm. FI. Brit. 964.
C. dioica. Huds. 401.
Gramen cyperoides minus, ranunculi capitulo longiore.
Raii Syn. 425.
Cyperoides parvum &c. Mich. Gen. 56. n. 1. t. 32.
/• te
F ir s t made known to us, as a British plant, by Professor
J. Beatie, who found it in Mearns-shire. Mr. Groult next
fathered it on Landsdown near Bath, from whence Mr.
Forster communicated our specimens, the ripe fruit only
being added from one of Mr. Davall’s own. Mr. Forster informs
us it grows on the slope of a hill on which there is a
clump of firs, about a mile and a quarter from Bath. We are
also greatly obliged to him for suggesting Ray’s and Hudson’s
synonyms, in consequence of which the long-unascertained
G. capitata of the latter, certainly not that of Linnaeus, turns
out the rea.] dioica, t. 543. Mr. Templeton has found the Davalliana
near Belfast. It is much the most common of .the
two in Switzerland. We capnot but wonder that the observing
Mr. Wahlenberg still esteems them but varieties of each
other.
The root of this, as Willdenow well observes, is tufted,
not creeping; stem rough, not smooth. The spikes are much
longer than in dioica, and the long, reflexed, strongly ribbed
seed-covers, roughish only at the angles near the top, not serrated,
are abundantly characteristic.