Ser. MELANOSPERMEiE, Fam. SporochnacecB. 



Plate LXIX. 



BELLOTIA ERIOPHORUM, iiaw. 



Gen. Char. Frond filiform, solid, umbellately branched; the branches 

 crowned with a tuft of penicillate filaments. Receptacle solitary in 

 each branch, cylindrical, surrounding the middle portion of the branch, 

 composed of simple, vertical, densely crowded paranemata. Spores 

 on the sides of the paranemata, oblong, transversely striate. — Bello- 

 TiA {Harv.), in memory of Lieut. Bellot, of the French Navy, who 

 volunteered his services in one of the Eranklin searching Voyages, 

 and perished in the Polar Sea. 



J^rons filiformis, solida, uwJ)ellatim ramosa ; apicibus ramorum fascictdato- 

 comosis. Receptdculum in qiioque ramo uniciim, cijlindricum, mediam partem 

 rami circumvestie)is, e paranematibus simjdicibiis verticalibus dense stipatis 

 constitutum. Sporce ad paranemata tateraliier affixes, oblongce, transversim 

 striata. 



Bellotia Eriophorum, Harv. 



Bellotia Eriophovum, Harv. in An. Sc, Nat. ser. 2. v, 15, p. 332. Harv. in 

 Hook. fit. Mor. Tasm. cum icone (ined.). Harv. Alg. Austr. Exslc. n. 48. 

 Mont, in Compt. Rendus, (v. 40.) 9 ap. 1855. 



Hab. Cast ashore from deep water. Port Phillip Heads, J)r. F. Mueller 

 and jr. II. H. Western Port, abundantly, IV^. H. H. Georgetown, 

 Tasmania, very rare, R. Gunn, Esq., Charles Henty^ Esq. 



Geogr, Distr. Bass's Straits, both sides of Channel, 



Descr. Root densely clothed with woolly fibres. Fronds, many from the same 

 base, 1-2 feet long, twice as thick as hog's-bristle, terete, nearly equal in 

 diameter throughout, twice or thrice umbellately decompound. Umbels with 

 twenty to thirty rays or more, young rays being successively evolved from 

 the end of the axis or base of umbel ; each ray 2-4 inches long, spreading, 

 tomentose at its base, afterwards quite naked and smooth to the summit, 

 which is crowned with a very dense, globular, penicillate tuft of slender ar- 

 ticulate filaments, from ^-f of an inch in diameter. These tufts are so 

 dense, that when expanded with water they hold it like a sponge ; the fila^ 

 ments of which they are composed are of byssoid fineness, and very flaccid ; 

 on old branches they are found in various stages of decay, and at length 

 fall off', leaving a callosity from which a new umbel of rays may spring. 

 The receptacle of the fruit is formed in the middle portion of each fertile 

 branch ; it is 1-2 inches long, and from half a line to nearly a line in dia- 

 meter, being twice or thrice that of the barren branch : it consists of densely 

 packed, vertical, simple, articulate paranemata, whorled round the branch, 



