﻿16 Howe: The Anthocerotaceae 



Thallus rosettes rather small, 5— 1 5 mm. in diameter, light green, 

 more or less blackened in drying, depressed, or somewhat erect and 

 turbinate, laciniate and undulate-crisped, often with slender ascend- 

 ing marginal lobes, variously lamellate-ridged, lacunose, or warty, 

 8-12 cells thick in median parts, becoming rather suddenly 3- or 

 2-stratose at periphery, sometimes indistinctly costate, here and 

 there usually glandular-thickened with age ; surface-cells distinct, 

 protuberant, subquadrate, irregularly pentagonal or hexagonal, 

 45-75 X 30-45 fi 9 with a large angular chloroplast, the interior cells 

 much larger, thin-walled, surrounding numerous and ample lacunae: 

 monoicous: involucres often geminate, cylindrical, oblong-linear, 

 1-5 X .4-1.1 mm., sometimes lamellate, scarious now and then at 

 the repand mouth : capsule dark brown or black, 8-60 (mostly 

 1 5-30) X .25-45 mm., with somewhat elongated pedicel; spores 

 black or nearly so, 35-58 ft in maximum diameter, angular, the 

 convex face furnished with numerous (75-125) spines or 2- or 

 3-pointed papillae 3 fi or more in length, the plane faces foveolate- 

 reticulate, sometimes becoming granulose-papillate near the 

 angles; pseudo-elaters fuscous, 45-200 X 12-1 8 //, of 1-4 cells, 

 geniculate, variously contorted and inflated, 



Exsicc. Hep. Bor-Am. 122; Hep. Am. 82. 



On damp ground. Less common than A. laevis^ with which it 

 sometimes grows. Connecticut (Underwood, Evans); New York 

 (Coville, Underwood); Ohio (Lesquereux, Werner); Tennessee 

 (Naylor); South Carolina (Austin); Florida (J. D. Smith, Under- 

 wood); Alabama (Mohr) ; Louisiana (Langlois); Missouri (De- 

 metrio) ; Canada {fide Austin). 



The measurements in the above description have been drawn 

 in part from the European A. punctata* of authors which is ex- 

 tremely variable and is thought by some to include more than one 

 species. We have seen no American specimens with involucres 

 longer than 4 mm. or capsules longer than 4 cm. 



Anthoceros laevis is often confused with A. punctatus in her- 

 baria, but the former can always be very easily distinguished from 

 the latter when fertile and mature, by the spores ; when sterile — if 

 superficial characters are doubtful — by the absence of lacunae 

 within the thallus, which in A. punctatus are large and numerous. 



Anthoceros fusiformis A 



28 



1875. 



Thallus in depressed rosettes 6-20 mm, in diameter, or often 

 suberect and caespitose, in tufts 5-20 mm. deep, thick and rather 



