EVANS——-THE NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES OF ASTERELLA. 305 
feature with only one other species known to him, the plant which he after- 
wards described as F. violacea. Except for the fact that he assigned three or 
four spirals to the elaters, his account is clear and accurate, although he natu- 
rally paid but little attention to histological details. When he published F. 
violacea three years later he again compared it with F, bolanderi, but brought 
out several differences, among them the following: the larger size; the densely 
areolate thallus, not margined and with a broadened ventral keel, the thicker 
and blackish purple peduncle; the larger female receptacle, not umbonate upon 
drying, usually tricarpous, and very long-barbate below; the semipendent 
pseudoperianths, 12 to 16-cleft and violet. To F. bolanderi he had ascribed 
an indistinctly porous thallus, with a membranous margin; a pale purple 
peduncle (toward the base); a female receptacle umbonate upon drying; sub- 
radiately spreading pseudoperianths, usually 10-cleft and white. He admitted 
that his specimens of F’. violacea were immature and of course said nothing: 
about the spores and elaters. 
The validity of Asterella violacea has been recognized by Underwood,,- 
Stephani, and Howe. Underwood’s description’? is largely based on Austin’s, 
and makes no mention of the spores and elaters; these structures are described, 
however, by Stephani and by Howe, the latter author’ giving detailed figures 
of both A. violacea and A. bolanderi. In accepting A. violacea as a species he 
notes its occasional approach to A. bolanderi but regards it as “ usually very 
distinct,” emphasizing “ the violet, 12-18-cleft pseudoperianth, the larger more 
conical 2 receptacle with less spreading lobes and more abundantly paleaceous- 
barbate beneath, and the commonly larger spores and elaters.” He adds that 
“the violet coloration sometimes disappears from the pseudoperianth,” but that 
under these circumstances the lobes of the receptacle often show a trace of 
purple. 
Stephani places F. violacea and F. bolanderi ten numbers apart in his mono- 
graph, on account of differences in the ventral scales, F. violacea being in- 
cluded in a group with lanceolate appendages and F'. bolanderi in a group 
with setaceous appendages. In his detailed descriptions he speaks of the ap- 
pendages of F. violacea as single and narrowly lanceolate; of those of F'. bo- 
landeri as filiform, 2 cells wide below, and long-setaceous at the apex. AS a 
matter of fact these differences are both vague and inconstant. Stephani’s 
statements about the spores also might seem to imply differences, but this is 
owing largely to their incompleteness. In F. violacea he speaks of the spores 
as lobate-crested with thin rough crests; in F. bolanderi, as having narrow, 
remotely crenulate wings. One other difference which he indicates was based 
on a misconception. In F. violacea he describes filaments reaching the epi- 
dermis in the narrow spaces of the green tissue; in F. bolanderi he describes 
narrow spaces without filaments. Stephani’s description of F. violacea is drawl 
from Jepson’s specimens, and he notes that the pseudoperianths are not violet 
but hyaline, a deviation which he regards as unimportant. 
The writer has had the privilege of studying a large series of specimens,. 
some labeled A. bolanderi and some A, violacea, from the herbarium of the New 
York Botanical Garden and from other collections. Although the differences: 
emphasized by Howe and in part by Austin are often apparent, they are never- 
theless, in the writer’s opinion, too subject to variation to offer a secure basis 
for specific separation. The differences in the pseudoperianths, for example, 
are hardly greater than those shown by A. tenella, where the color varies from 
Bull, Ill. Lab. Nat. Hist. 2: 41. 1884. 
*Mem. Torrey Club 7: pl. 97, 98. 1899. 
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