308 EVANS. 



losa. According to her statements no plants showing the blue or 

 purple color are capable of revivication. 



The coloration is by no means characteristic of the genus Mctzgeria 

 as a whole but is confined to certain definite species. It thus has a 

 significance from the standpoint of taxonomy, even if lifeless specimens 

 are the only ones that show it. So far as the writer's observations go 

 the coloration is usually, if not invariably, associated with gemmip- 

 arous species and, in some cases at least, with species in which the 

 gemmiparous branches show marked differentiation. The species 

 may further be distinguished by a tendency toward reversion and by 

 the long persistence of embr3 r onic and juvenile stages of development. 

 In extreme cases this persistence may be so pronounced that a large 

 mat of plants will absolutely fail to show the normal features of the 

 species to which it belongs. Most of the species in question are, more- 

 over, usually sterile, and, even when male branches are present in some 

 abundance, female branches are almost always extremely rare or 

 absent altogether. On account of these various peculiarities the 

 species of Metzgeria turning bluish or purplish have been the source 

 of much confusion to students, and different observers have often 

 reached divergent conclusions in regard to them. 



The best known species in this category is M. fruticulosa, widely 

 distributed in Europe and recently reported by the writer from the 

 states of Washington and Oregon. M. violacea is a close relative of 

 M. fruticulosa, so close that it can hardly be regarded as anything 

 more than a "small" or "geographical" species. The original 

 material of Jungermannia violacea was collected in 1773 at Dusky 

 Bay, New Zealand, by A. Sparrmann, who accompanied Captain Cook 

 on his second voyage. Strange to say there is no record of its having 

 been collected there a second time, and most of the works dealing with 

 the Hepaticae of New Zealand make no mention of it whatever. This 

 is true, for example, of Hooker's well-known Handbook of the New 

 Zealand Flora, published in 1867, and of Stephani's recent Species 

 Hepaticarum. 



The earlier writers, however, were more charitable toward the 

 species. In 1815 its validity was recognized by Weber (27, p. 100), 

 who regarded it as identical with Dickson's Riccia fruticulosa, reducing 

 the latter to synonymy, in spite of its having been published earlier. 

 For a while Weber's views prevailed to a certain extent, and European 

 writers continued to use the name ''violacea," now in a specific and 

 now in a varietal sense, always assuming as they did so that J. violacea 

 and Riccia fruticulosa were one and the same thing. With the lapse 



