THE DISTRIBUTION OF CAREX ERICETORUM POLL. IN BRITAIN

Carex ericetorum is a plant of open, generally calcareous heaths. It ranges from the eastern Pyrenees and southern Alps to Norway and northern Russia, and extends well into Siberia. Like the related C. montana L., it reaches its north-western limit in England, but its distribution here, as in the rest of Europe, is more northern and eastern than that of its ally. In Britain this sedge has a curious history. A specimen gathered near Cambridge in 1833 (not 1838 as originally stated) was not correctly determined until 1861 (Sowerby 1863). Subsequently a specimen sent in 1829, as C. pilulifera L., to Sir W. C. Trevelyan from Mildenhall Heath, West Suffolk, was found to be C. ericetorum, and it is probable that Sir J. Cullum's 'Carex montana ' from Newmarket Heath in 1775-76 was also this species (Bennett 1910). By the end of the nineteenth century it had been discovered in half-a-dozen more places in East Anglia and was regarded as very much a plant of that region. A new chapter opened in 1944, when E. C. Wallace found it in Yorkshire, and it is now known in a dozen northern and north-western localities. It is highly probable that it occurs in many more but has been passed over as C. caryophyllea Latourr., its regular associate in almost all its British stations. When in flower the two are instantly.distinguishable, for the purplish, slim, more regularly cylindrical male spike, and the rounded female glumes of C. ericetorum, purple with a broad, scarious, often ciliat