I9°7. 215 



BRYOLOGICAL NOTES FROM COUNTY DOWN. 



BY J. H. DAVIKS- 



On my notes of mosses recently gathered in County Down are 

 the names of a few, which, perhaps, may be deemed sufficiently 

 interesting to justify one in recording them here. 



The shortlist now supplied contains the names of twelve 

 species and varieties — those to each of which an asterisk is 

 prefixed — that have not been reported from this county before. 

 They include two species and one variety, viz. \-—Tortula 

 angustata, Barbula gracilis, var. viridis, and Hypnum imp07iens, 

 which, so far as I know, have not previously been recognised 

 in Ireland. The finding, in County Down, of these additions 

 to the Irish moss-flora, it may be confessed, was a positive 

 delight, the more so in that they are rare plants elsewhere in 

 the British Isles. Tortula angustata, a species which had been 

 in mind as one that might be expected here, had often been 

 sought far and wide without success, until at length, singularly 

 enough, it was very lately met with on a roadside bank, within 

 a few paces of the entrance to my dwelling at Lenaderg. For 

 Barbula gracilis^ var. viridis, there seems to be only a solitary 

 station in Great Britain, that being in Sussex. The type has 

 also been detected here, and for that the only other certain 

 Irish record is from County L,imerick. Hypnum imponens, 

 one of the rarest of British mosses, is a somewhat robust and 

 conspicuous plant of a beautiful dark yellowish colour, varie- 

 gated with golden brown, and of so striking an appearance, 

 when seen growing, that it would hardly escape the eye of one 

 who observes these things. 



Another interesting species noted below, Atchidium alterni- 

 folium^ which had not been seen in Ireland for some seventy 

 years or more, seems noteworthy were it only by reason of its 

 history in this island. To Dr. Moore, when preparing his 

 serviceable Synopsis for the Royal Irish Academy, the plant 

 was unknown as Irish, unaware as he seems to have been, that 

 Drummond had discovered it near Belfast in the early part of 

 last century. Dr. Taylor, in Flora Hibcruica, Part II., p. 7 

 (1837), under the name of Phascum alteniifoliuni) Dicks., gives 

 two southern localities for the present plant (Co. Cork and 



