264 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 
LovuIstana: Sicily Island, specimen from the Hooker Herbarium (N. Y.; type 
of Fimbriaria mollis) ; Chateigues, Langlois (C. C. H., U. 8S.) ; Mandeville, Frére 
Celestin (C. C. H., U. 8.) ; without definite locality, Short (N. Y.). 
Texas: Hunt County, Saunders (N. Y., Y.); College Station, 1914, Blodgett 
(N. Y., ¥.); Austin, McAllister (N. Y., Y.). 
First reports from Ontario, New York, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Indiana, Tennessee, and Missouri were made apparently by Underwood (Bot. 
Gaz. 20: 60. 1895), no localities being mentioned in any case. 
Asterella tenella was one of the first distinctively American liverworts to be 
described. Accompanying the description of Dillenius an older synonym of 
Clayton is quoted, as follows: “ Lichen terrestris pileatus Clayt. n. 377. apud 
Gronov. Fl. Virg. p. 127.” This quotation, however, deserves a word of ex- 
planation. In the first part of the first edition of the Flora Virginica, pub- 
lished in 1739, the work to which Dillenius refers, Gronovius does not list 
Clayton’s plant as a distinct species but merely as a synonym of “ Hepatica 
vulgaris major, vel officinarum, Italiae. Mich. Pl. Gen. p. 82’ Now Micheli’s 
plant is clearly Conocephalum conicum (L.) Dum., and Dillenius recognized 
the fact that Clayton’s plant was amply distinct, because he added to his cita- 
tion the phrase, “ Ubi recidendum synonymon Mich.” It is of interest to note 
that Gronovius, in the second part of his Flora Virginica, published in 1748, 
follows the example of Dillenius and accepts Clayton’s species, although he uses 
the Dillenian name. He adds the curious observation that the plant, mixed 
with black pepper, is recommended for use in case of mad dog bites. In a 
later edition of the Flora Virginica, published in 1762, Gronovius again lists 
the species, quoting the description from the Species Plantarum as authorita- 
tive, without adopting the binomial name which Linnaeus had proposed. 
In the original description Dillenius gives as the English equivalent of his 
Latin polynomial, “The small channelled Liverwort, with fringed Caps.” He 
calls attention to the forked branching of the thallus, to the abundance of the 
receptacles, and to the fringes at the margin of the disk, the color being described 
as whitish in the lower part and purple above. His figures show most of these 
features clearly and bring out in addition the long and slender stalks of the 
female receptacles. He cites the species from Virginia only, basing it entirely 
upon Clayton’s specimens, and Linnaeus likewise restricts it to the same locality. 
The American origin of the species is thus adequately established. Before 
long, however, certain European writers confused A, tenella with various Old 
World species and assigned to it a very extensive geographical distribution. 
The confusion which thus arose will be considered more fully in connection 
with the following species. It came to an end in 1836, when Taylor’ definitely 
restricted the name Fimbriaria tenella to plants from the United States, and 
since this date the species has rarely been reported from other localities. 
The two synonyms, Fimbriaria nigripes and F, mollis, may now be considered, 
I’, nigripes was based on specimens collected near Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1828, 
by T. G. Bischoff, an uncle of the author of the species. In the original de- 
scription, which was written presumably by Lindenberg, the plant was com- 
pared with F, tenella and was said to differ in its terete, dark purple peduncles, 
in its larger umbonate receptacles, and in the inflexed purple segments of its 
pseudoperianth, the apices alone being white and hyaline. In F. tenella the 
peduncles were said to be striated and brown, the receptacle to be much smaller 
and not umbonate, and the segments of the pseudoperianth to be plane and 
white throughout. The year after the publication of F. nigripes, Bischoff him- 
self reduced it to a variety porphyrocephala of F. tenella, and illustrated his 
* Trans. Linn. Soc. 17: 886. 1836. 
