38 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 85 



Of the material listed no. 1668 may be classified as var. siihlaevipcs 

 Card./ because the pedicel is scarcely papillose at the top ; under a 

 strong magnification one can see only separated, depressed, low pa- 

 pillae. In this specimen a single costa is the exception ; most of the 

 leaves have a double nerve of very variable length, sometimes very 

 short. The Bryologia Europaea indicates that this case is not of rare 

 occurrence. 



BRACHYTHECIUM HASTIFOLIUM Card. Rev. Bryol. 37: 69. 1910 



This species is not mentioned by Brotherus in his treatment of 

 Brachytheciutn in the second edition of Die natiirlichen Pflanzen- 

 familien, but I am inclined to think that it is the one cited in the genus 

 Heterophyllimi under the combination H. hastifolium (Card.) Fleisch. 



Cardot says, " Costa ad f evanida." How can this character agree 

 with the genus Heterophylluui, which has " Rippe sehr kurz oder 

 fehlend?" How could a moss which a bryologist of the standing of 

 Cardot afifirms to belong to the genus Brachythechiin have at the same 

 time the characters of the family Brachytheciaceae and those common 

 to the genus Heterophylltnn of the family Sematophyllaceae ? 



I have endeavored to solve this puzzle. An examination of no. 

 10474 of Pringle's exsiccata brought the answer to me. The speci- 

 men in my collection labelled Brachythecium hastifolium Card, is 

 not this species, but Heterophylhim affine (Hook.) Fleisch. Now if 

 one turns to the original description, where Cardot discusses Prin- 

 gle's no. 10474, which he considers as a form of his Brachythecium 

 hastifolium, the inference is clear that Pringle distributed under 

 this same number (10474) two different species — the form just men- 

 tioned and Heterophyllmn affine. I take no pride in this discovery, 

 but I cannot understand why such an expert and conscientious bryolo- 

 gist as Fleischer failed to find the clue and thus allowed himself to be 

 misled into giving full confidence to a specimen which did not agree 

 with the original description and was distributed by a collector who 

 was not a bryologist. 



My conclusions are: First, that Hetcrophyllnm hastifoliiini 

 (Card.) Fleisch. is a myth, and that this combination must disappear 

 from nomenclature ; secondly, that the binomial, BrachytJiccium hasti- 

 folium Card., which applies to one of the best characterized species 

 of the subgenus Salcbrosium, ought to take again its place. 



'Rev. Bryol. 37:70. igio. 



