NEW OR RARE BRITISH HEPATICS 203 



search in the Held these characters are found to be subject to rather 

 wide variations. The green colour of the plant appears to vary 

 directly in accordance with the amount of sunshine which it receives, 

 and this variation proves on cultivation to take place very rapidly ; 

 while the larger size and the swollen growth of the upper portion 

 of the thallus, which gives the appearance of wings, seerns to be 

 directlv attributable to the wetter, more shaded situations in which 

 the variety generally grows. 



Cephalozia SPiNiFLORASchffn. In "Cephalozia-Studien" (Hed- 

 ivigia, Ed. liv. 1914, pp. 311-327) Schiffner publishes the descrip- 

 tion of a new species of Cephalozia, of the G. catenulata (Hub.) 

 Spruce group, under the above name. The new species differs from 

 C. macrostachya Kaal., its nearest ally, in the heteroicous inflorescence, 

 the rather larger and generally more incrassate cells, the very long 

 androecia with more spinous-dentate bracts, the more spinous-dentate 

 perichajtial bracts, and in the perianth being usually split to the base 

 with its mouth longly-toothed, the teeth themselves being toothed on 

 their margins. The plant is normally dioicous, but occasionally 

 paroicous or synoicous inflorescences can be found, the latter being a 

 rare condition in hepatics and probably unique in Cephalozia. The 

 heteroicous inflorescence is rare, and might be regarded as a merely 

 abnormal condition, were it not found to exist in the plant from 

 widely separated localities. 



Forms of the G. catenulata group are well represented in Sussex, 

 and on revising my plants in the light of Schiffner' s publication, I 

 made certain that a plant that I gathered on Ambersham Common 

 and sent to Schiffner, and which is published as No. 549 of his Hep. 

 Eur. Exs. as 0. macrostachya Kaal., belonged to the new species. 

 All the characters above mentioned were present, and I had often 

 had qualms as to whether this plant were really identical with the 

 true G. macrostachya Kaal, of which the author kindly sent me an 

 original specimen from the island of Ramholmen, Norway, as it 

 materially differed from this and also from other undoubted specimens 

 of C. macrostachya from other parts of Sussex and elsewhere. This 

 view is corroborated by Karl Mueller {op. cit. 2nd Abl. p. 778), 

 where he cites the Ambersham plant as belonging to this species, 

 which he reduces to the rank of a variety of C. macrostachya. The 

 question of according specific rank to many of the puzzling forms of 

 this difficult genus must always largely remain a personal one, but I 

 think that Dr. Schiffner has shown good reasons for regarding 

 O. spinifiora as a species of equal validity with C. macrostachya, 

 which might itself be regarded as a marsh variety of a polymorphic 

 G. catenidata. Figures 1 to 7 of G. macrostachya by Mr. Jameson 

 in Macvicar's Student's Handbook of British Hepatics relate, no 

 doubt, to G. spinifiora. 



Cephaloziella ET/AOHisTA (Jack) Schiffn., var. spint&era 

 (Lindb.) K. M. For some years past I have from time to time 

 gathered in the bogs of Ashdown Forest a few scattered sterile steins 

 of a small species of Gephaloziella, which I felt sure must belong to 

 this species, and the proof of the plant's existence with us was fully 

 confirmed in May 1919, when, while botanizing on the forest near 

 Pressridge Warren with Mr. LI. J. Cocks, we came upon a small tuft 

 of the variety with well-developed perianths. The plant was origi- 



