IfOTES OX LTCHNOTHAMXUS 125 



NOTES OX LYCHNOTHAMNUS. 



Br James Groves, F.L.S. 



Through the kindness of Dr. Rendle I have had the opportunity 

 of examining from time to time a charophji:e which has for some 

 years past been in cultivation in a glass jar in the Botanical Depart- 

 ment of the British Museum. The circumstances in which the plant 

 was obtained are somewhat unusual. Mr. T. V. Hodgson, of the 

 Plymouth Museum, being interested in the Entomosti-aca, and hearing 

 of Professor Sars's experiments in raising those creatures from dried 

 mud, asked his brother, Mr. E. Eoscoe Hodgson, who was residing at 

 Port Ehzabeth, Cape Colony, to send him some mud from any local 

 dried-up pond. The latter accordingly in about the year 1896, 

 forwarded some nine or ten pounds of nearly dry mud from a dried-up 

 " vlei " near the town. Mr. T. V. Hodgson sent some of this mud to 

 Professor Sars, and both of these gentlemen raised from it a number 

 of Entomostraca ; the result of Prof. Sars's investigation was published 

 in 1898. The mud also contained vegetable matter, and from some 

 of this, which had been sent to Dr. Caiman and placed in water, the 

 charophyte grew u]) together with a species of Riella. The charo- 

 phyte produces oogonia and antheridia in abundance, but I have seen 

 no ripe oospores. I feel, however, veiy little doubt in referring it to 

 a weak form of Lyohuothamnus macropogon Braun, a characteristic 

 Australasian species, which had not I think hitherto been known from 

 Africa. In all the fertile whorls of the South African plant which I 

 have examined, oogonia are produced in the axils of the branchlets, 

 as in L. macropogon^ but not also at any of the free branchlet-nodes ; 

 and this added to the absence of ripe fruit militates against an 

 entirely satisfactory determination. It is to be hoped that further 

 material from Cape Colony will be forthcoming to settle the matter. 



The extremely long stipulodes, of which there is often a second 

 W'horl above the branchlets and which gave rise to the specific name 

 macropogon, are but feebly represented in the South African plant, 

 and, indeed, at some nodes are quite wanting. It is possible that this, 

 as well as the defective development of the fruit, may be due to 

 impaired vitalit}^ owing to the plant growing under unnatm-al con- 

 ditions. The pronounced development of the stipulodes is, moreover, 

 by no means constant in L. macropogon. A large number of speci- 

 mens of that species were collected at Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, by 

 the late Augustus Hamilton, for many years Director of the Dominion 

 Museum at Wellington, who, through the kind offices of Mr. Walter 

 Barratt was good enough to present them to my late brother and 

 myself. An examination of these disclosed a great variation in the 

 development of the stipulodes, which range from tiny conical pro- 

 cesses about 150 /x in length to the characteristic long slender ones 

 attaining to about 1600 /u, but never reaching to the extraordinary 

 length of those of the typical Australian plant, so well shown in 

 Kiitzing's beautiful drawing, Tab. Phvc. vii. t. 46. In the Hawkes 

 Bay plant I have not observed any whorls destitute of stipulodes, but 

 in some of them the circle is imperfect. The entire absence of these 

 organs from some whorls of the cultivated South African plant has 



