Holloway. — Studies in the New Zealand Species of Lyeopodimn. 85 



young plant, but there is no doubt that the tubercles observed were 

 instances of the same process which Treub has described. In L. ramu- 

 Iosuih I have found many instances in which the root-tip was swollen to form 

 a somewhat egg-shaped tuber. On one occasion I dissected out from each 

 other several pieces of old roots, one of these pieces bearing a secondary 

 root whose tip had swollen to form a tuber, whilst entangled amongst the 

 roots were two very young plantlets, one with two protophylls and the 

 other with one. I have no doubt that these latter had originated as root- 

 tubercles. In several other instances a detached root was found whose end 

 was swollen to form a large massive irregularly-shaped tuber (e.g., fig. 5), at 

 the growing end of which a secondary tuber was attached surmounted by one 

 or more developing protophylls. Both tubers were always green in colour, 

 and both bore rhizoids. In the case of the plant shown in fig. 5 two other 

 young green plantlets were disentangled from the rhizoids of the tuber. 

 They had probably been budded off from it. Plate VIII, fig. 3, is a photo- 

 graph of a root-tubercle of L. ramulosum. 



V. Gemmae produced from Cortical Cells of Old Roots. 



In dissecting out young plants and prothalli of L. ramulosum from mossy 

 turves obtained from a clay roadside cutting near the Mikonui Eiver, West- 

 land. I discovered a large number of instances of very young green plant- 

 lets attached along old isolated rootlets of this species. The older of these 

 plantlets did not seem to be very firmly attached to the roots, but could 

 be more or less easily brushed off with a camers-hair brush in the process 

 of cleaning. The youngest plantlets, however, were more firmly attached. 

 A large number of these old isolated rootlets were found in the material 

 dissected, and adventitiously produced plantlets were also in great abund- 

 ance. In no case was a prothallus found attached to a plantlet, and only 

 two isolated prothalli altogether were here found. Each plantlet consisted 

 of a basal tuberous portion, the central region of which was opaque and 

 brownish owing to the dense protoplasmic contents of the centrally placed 

 cells, surmounted by one or more developing protophylls. Thus these 

 plantlets were in general structure closely similar to all other young plants 

 of this species, whether vegetatively or sexually produced, of the same 

 degree of development. The original end of the basal tuberous region, 

 however, was generally irregularly shaped, and in older plantlets the whole 

 tuber spindly and even sausage-shaped, in this respect these plants being 

 distinguishable from sexually produced plantlets. The characteristic form 

 of these adventitiously produced plants corresponded closely with what I 

 had previously noticed in the case of a number of very young plantlets of 

 the same species found in material obtained from quite a different locality. 

 I had there dissected out a good many plantlets of this form, and had 

 been struck by the fact that none of them were attached to prothalli. 

 I have no doubt now that they had been produced adventitiously from 

 roots in the manner described in this section. It would seem, then, that 

 this method of vegetative reproduction is not uncommon in this species. 

 Whether or not it is due to an unusual season, or to some other such cause, 

 I was not able definitely to determine. It is to be noted that none of the 

 more fully grown plantlets gave any evidence of that extended horizontal 

 habit of growth of the basal tuber with the postponement of stem-forma- 

 tion such as is so characteristic a feature in the sexually produced plants 

 of this species. The development of the stem-apex is early, so that the 



