OF \VESTERX PENNSYLVANIA 125 



is more or less open-mouthed and turbinate, with little or no 

 constriction below the mouth. 



This variety is reported with a general range similar to that 

 of the species but we have as yet seen no typical specimens of it 

 from our region. Porter's Catalogue lists it from several coun- 

 ties in Eastern Pennsylvania and from McKean Countv, D. A. 



* mt 



Burnett ; but a specimen in the Herbarium of the Carnegie 

 Museum collected by Burnett, at Langmade, May 29, 1898, Mc- 

 Kean County, is evidently purely L '. ulophylla. 



Famiy IX. SPLACHNACEAE. 



Autoicous or dioicous, rarely pseudautoicous : annual or 

 perennial cespitose bog or alpine mosses, usually living on de- 

 caying animal or vegetable matter, the tufts green to yellow- 

 green, inside more or less red-radiculose, sometimes blackish : 

 stem delicate with a large central strand : leaves mostly distant, 

 flaccid, more or less broad; costa mostly not quite percurrent, 

 usually with two basal guides ; leaf-cells loose, parenchyma- 

 tous, 4-6-sided, elongate towards the base, sparingly chloro- 

 phyllose, often inflated at the margin of the leaf: seta erect, 

 sometimes very long ; capsule erect, symmetric, with a long 

 collum or with a large colored hypophysis : usually annulus 

 none ; peristome simple, teeth sixteen, flat, aggregated in pairs 

 or in fours, more or less hygroscopic, vertically striate, trabecu- 

 late, punctate, mostly golden-brown; spore-sack surrounded 

 !>y a cavity; columella strong; spores small to large; opercu- 

 luni convex to umbonate or long-conic, rarely none; calyptra 

 small, either cucullate and united into a tube below or conic 

 and almost entire to lobed. 



A small family of 5 genera and about 60 species ; in our 

 range but one genus. 



1. SPLACHXL'M Linnaeus, Heclwig. 



Autoicous, or. when old, dioicous : weak, distantly leaved ; 

 male flowers terminal, bracts stellate-squarrose ; bog-mosses 

 growing mainly upon the excrement of cattle or. as in Canada 

 and northern United States, often upon that of the moose : tufts 

 loose, soft, shining, light to yellowish-green ; leaves flaccid, 

 spreading, when old wine-red at the base, broadly obovate, 

 plane, acute, entire except sometimes at the very apex ; costa 

 weak, ending below the apex ; areolation very lax : seta long, 

 slender, dextrorse; capsule erect, small, oval to cylindric, sur- 

 mounting a much wider inflated hypophysis which may be 

 obovate, globose, or parasol-like, mostly dark violet-purple, 

 when dry much wrinkled ; annulus none ; teeth confluent at 

 base, paired, very hygroscopic ; spores small ; operculum 

 swollen or umbonate. fugacious : columella capped, generally 



