NOTES ON INDIAN CHAROPHYTA. 359 
Notes on Indian Charophyta. By JAMES Groves, F.L.5. 
(PrATES 35, 36.) 
| Read 3rd May, 1928. | 
Ix 1849 in a paper entitled ** Characeæ India orientalis et insularum maris 
pacifici," published in Hooker’s Journal of Botany, vol. i. pp. 292-301, 
Alexander Braun gave an account of the Charophyta then known to occur 
in India, enumerating eleven species. In 1873 he contributed a list of four 
species collected by S. Kurz in Burma to a paper by G. H. Zeller in the 
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, xlii. p. 193. The “ Fragmente einer 
Monographie der Characeen," compiled by Dr. Nordstedt from Braun’s MSS., 
and published in 1882, contained a number of additional Indian records. 
Since the last-mentioned date many botanists have collected these plants 
in India, and the present paper is based on the examination of specimens 
which have passed through the hands of my late brother and myself in the 
interval, so far as we have been able to identify them. 
In 1882 representatives of the two large genera Chara and Nitella 
only were known from India. ‘Since that date Nitellopsis, Lychnothamnus, 
and Tolypella have been found, the last-named being represented by three 
species. 
In the past, difficulty has been experienced in dealing with the specimens 
available, especially those of the Nitelleæ, so many of them being gathered 
at haphazard and imperfectly prepared. Of late years this is being largely 
remedied by the selection of healthy fruiting specimens, and still more by 
the preservation of portions in formalin. While even poor specimens of the 
Chareæ can by treatment usually be sufficiently restored for identification, 
I have not found this to be the case with the more delicate Nitelleæ. In 
dealing on this side with the more variable plants of the group, one is at a 
disadvantage in often having only a single specimen to examine, whereas on 
the spot an examination of a series might lead to a different conclusion. It 
is, therefore, in the hope that it may be of some little use in assisting and 
stimulating botanists working in India to the study of the group that the 
present paper has been written. Very much still remains to be worked out, 
especially in the direction of clearing up the limits and relations of the 
several species in some tangled groups. There are also probably other 
species tò be found. Within the past two years, Mr. G. O. Allen has 
succeeded in adding three well-marked species to the list, collected within 
quite a small area. | 
[ have included in the paper references to the species previously recorded 
so as to make it an enumeration of all those known to occur within the 
