HEPATICS. 



By F. STEPHANI. 



If these plants, collected by Welwitsch in Angola, had been 

 examined twenty years ago, the greater part of them would have 

 been new to us ; since that time, however, a great many Hepatics 

 have come in from Western Tropical Africa, particularly from 

 from the islands of St. Thomas and Fernando Po, as well as from 

 the neighbourhood of the Cameroons Mountains, so that only eight 

 new species remain, the descriptions of which are here inserted. 



As to the geographical description of the following Hepatics, 

 there are some amongst them which have been found in all 

 tropical countries, as Eulejeii^nia flava Spruce, Frullania squarrosa 

 Nees, Dumortiera hirsuta R. Bl. et N., Cyathodiuvi cavernarum 

 Kunze, Aneura 2nnguis Dumort., and Anthoceros coinmunis Steph. ; 

 others belong to the flora of tropical South America, like 

 Lopholejeunea Sagrceana Spr., Cololejeunea crenatiflora Steph., and 

 Syviphyogyna brasiliensis Nees. Quite a number have been found 

 also at the Cape : for instance, Lejeunea Breutelii, L. Papj>eana^ 

 Ricciella Rautanenii, and Plagiochasma muricata. 



What remains is entirely of African origin ; and the most 

 interesting specimen is Exm'motheca j^ustulom, formerly known 

 from Madeira and Teneriffe. Recently a new species of this 

 genus has been found in Eastern Tropical Africa ; so that it may 

 safely be considered a tropical genus of that continent. Graf zu 

 Solms-Laubach in a splendid paper [Bot. Zeit. (1897) pp. 1-16, 

 tab. I.] has already expressed an opinion to this effect. 



1. RICCIA Micheli Nov. PI. Gen. p. 106. t. 57 (1729) ; G. L. 

 et N. Synops. Hep. p. 598 (1846). 



1. R. angolensis Steph. sp. n. 



Dioicous. Plant rather small, glaucous-green, gregarious. Frond 

 5 to 6 mm. long, from a narrow base obcordate or obconic oblong, 

 shortly furcate, with the forks widely divergent, shortly ligulate, 

 widely rotundate at apex and shortly bilobed, everywhere almost 

 plane, beneath the apex only exhibiting a short groove, on 

 the postical side a little incrassate; costa convex, longly and 

 gradually attenuated into the wings; margins thin. Frond in 

 transverse section six times wider than thick ; antical surface 

 plane, postical widely lunate, with the angles longly acitminate, 

 acute. Postical scales large, obliqviely ovate, remote, spotted with 

 purple, quite entire, longly produced. 



