110 American Midland Naturalist Monograph No. 6 



3a. Ulota crispa var. minus (Schwaegrichen) Jennings 

 {U. crispula Bruch) 



With shorter stems and leaves than in the species and a capsule which 

 rather abruptly narrows into a long neck, and with a sub-globose to oval urn, 

 which, when dry and empty, 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. Grout 

 (Moss Flora) does not regard minus as sufficiently distinct from crispa. 

 Porter's Catalogue lists it trom several counties in Eastern Pennsylvania and 

 from McKean County, D. A. Burnett; but a specimen in the Herbarium of the 

 Carnegie Museum collected by Burnett, at Langmade, May 29, 1898, McKean 

 County, is evidently purely U. ulophylla. 



Family 9. Splachnaceae 



Autoicous or dioicous, rarely pseudautoicous : annual or perennial cespitose 

 bog or alpine mosses, usually living on decaying 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, parenchymatous, 4-6-sided, elongate towards the base, 

 sparingly chlorophyllose, 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 brownish or red when mature, operculate, 

 and with a peristome of 32 divisions joined together to form 16 teeth (except 

 Tayloria splachnoides) and often grouped in twos or fours, and usually con- 

 sisting of three layers. There is a pre-peristome present in a few species. The 

 peristome teeth more or less hygroscopic, vertically striate, trabeculate, punc- 

 tate, mostly golden-brown. Annulus usually none; spore-sack surrounded by 

 a cavity; columella strong; spores small to large; operculum 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. 



There are 5 genera and more than 60 species of these peculiar plants, 

 widely distributed in mostly cold northern and alpine regions. 



Key to the Genera 



Hypophysis much wider than the capsule 1. Splachnum 



Hypophysis not much if any wider than the capsule 2. Tetraplodon 



1. Splachnum Linnaeus 

 A genus of 7 or 8 species of mostly cold northern bogs and on decaying 

 cattle dung. Only the following species known from our region. 



1. Splachnum ampullaceum Linnaeus 

 Plate LII 

 Loosely caespitose, up to about 1 cm high, in low tufts matted together 

 below by reddish-brown filaments; monoecious, the perigonial branches arising 



