JOTTINGS FROM THE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY 

 OF SYDNEY UNIVERSITY. 



By William A. Haswell, M.A., D.Sc. 



8. Notes on Tmesipteris and Psilotutn. 



These two remarkable genera are made by Goebel in his " Out- 

 lines of Classification and Special Morphology of Plants " (English 

 translation, 1887. p. 282), to constitute a separate division, 

 the Psilotacece, of the Lycopodince. The two genera, though 

 differing a good deal superficially, are yet in essential points 

 nearly allied, and quite distinctly separated off from the true Club- 

 Mosses. 



TmesijJteris tannensis, Bernh., is found growing most commonly 

 on the stems of species of tree-fern {Alsophila and Dicksonia) 

 sometimes on the ground, in New South Wales and Tasmania. It 

 occurs also in Queensland, Victoria, New Zealand, and the Pacific 

 Islands. The following is the definition of the genus given by 

 Bentham and Mueller in the " Flox'a Australiensis."* 



" Stems simple, leafy. Leaves vertical, sessile and decurrent, 

 entire, intermixed with leafy bracts bipartite on a short petiole. 

 Spore-cases usually two together, united into a capsule-like sorus, 

 sessile on the petiole of the bracts, transversely oblong, flattened, 

 two-celled and didymous or 2-lobed, opening loculicidally in two 

 valves. Spores minute, uniform." 



*Vol. VII. p. 680. 



