﻿-22 Howe: The Anthocerotaceae 



On moist soil. North Carolina (Schweinitz) ; Virginia (Un- 

 derwood) ; Delaware (Commons) ; Pennsylvania (James) ; New 

 Jersey (Austin) ; Connecticut (Underwood) ; Massachusetts (Un- 

 derwood and Seymour) ; Ohio (Sullivant, Lesquereux) ; Indiana 



(Underwood). 



Type in Herb. Schweinitz in possession of the Philadelphia 



Academy of Natural Sciences. 



The color and size of the spores and the appendiculate colu- 

 mella — characters which were emphasized by Sullivant in distin- 

 guishing Notothylas melanospora and N. valvata, are seen from a 

 study of the specimens now accessible to afford little or no basis 

 for a specific separation. Of greater constancy, perhaps, in com- 

 paring the forms that we have included under N. orbicularis, are 

 the length of the capsule, the texture of its outer wall, and the 

 presence or absence of sutures, yet these, we believe, are matters 

 of vigor and perfection in development rather than of specific 

 significance. Capsules that project well beyond the involucre 

 seem invariably to exhibit well defined sutures and to have very 

 thick-walled, usually oblong, cells on the surface, while those that 

 ripen wholly enclosed in the involucre, on the same plant, some- 

 times, have only rudimentary sutures or none at all and show 

 comparatively thin-walled, often irregularly quadrate, surface-cells. 

 Sullivant seems to have proposed N. melanospora with some hesi- 

 tation, and Spruce* has placed on record his doubt as to its dis- 

 tinctness. N. valvata Sulliv., as is well known to American 

 hepaticologists, was first reduced by Austin. The spores in N. 

 orbicularis occasionally undergo quite a remarkable change of 

 color in the ripening, being sometimes almost black in the upper 

 part of the capsule while bright yellow below. The change ap- 

 pears to be quite different in nature from that in Anthoceros punc- 

 tatus and its allies, in which there is in the earlier stages no yellow 



but a dusky tinge, this being simply intensified in the process of 

 maturing. 



2. Notothylas Breutelii (Gottsche) Gottsche Bot. Zeit. 16: 21 



(Anhang). 1858. 

 Anthoceros Breutelii Gottsche, G. L. N. Syn. Hep. 583. 1846 



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Hepaticae of the Amazon and Andes, 578. 1885. 



