Ser. MELANOSPERMEiE. Fam. Sporochioidece. 



Plate LXII. 



ENCYOTHALIA CLIFTONI, Haw. 



Gen. Chah. Frond filiform^ solid, alternately branched; branches beset 

 with penicillate, setaceous ramelli. Receptacle one or two in each 

 branch, cylindrical, investing the middle portion of the branch, and 

 consisting of simple, vertical, densely crowded paranemata. Spores 

 attached to the paranemata, oblong, transversely striate. — Encyo- 

 THALIA {Harv.), from e<yKvo<i, pregnant, and 6a\o<i, a hranch; the 

 fertile branches are swollen. 



Frons filiformis, solida, alterne ramom ; ramis ramellis setaceis penicillato- 

 comosis per totam longitud'mem obsessis. Receptaculum in quoque ramo 

 nnicum, cylindraceum, niediam partem rami circumvestiens, ex paranematibus 

 simplicibus verticalibus dense stipatis constitutuvi. Sporce ad paranemata 

 latej-ales, oblonyce, transversim striata. 



Encyothalia Cli/toni, Harv. 



Hab. Cast ashore from deep water, at Eremantle, George Clifton, Esq. 



Geogr. Distr. Western Australia. 



Descr. Root, a large conical disc, \-\ inch in diameter, thickly clothed with 

 hard, woolly fibres. Stem filiform, stupose at base, glabrous upwards, half 

 a line or more in diameter, 1 or 3 feet long, simple, but iurnished with nu- 

 merous lateral branches, and beset with slender setaceous ramelli, which iu 

 a young state bear at the summits tufts of confervoid filaments. Branches 

 alternate or irregularly inserted, virgate, quite simple, a foot or more in 

 length, stupose at their origin, then glabrous and beset, like the stem, with 

 setaceous, pencil-crowned rameUi. Ramelli inserted on all sides of the 

 stem and branches, from \-\ inch long, spreading, bristle-shaped, mi- 

 nutely dilated at the summit ; crowned with a dense pencil of very slender, 

 articulated, soft filaments, which at length fall away. Receptacles one or 

 two in each branch, sausage-shaped, occupying the middle region of the 

 branch, and wholly formed of \si\\mi& paranemata, whorled round the branch, 

 and, in fact, formed out of elongations of the epidermal cells. To these 

 paranemata, which are simple, with a sphacelate terminal cell, are laterally 

 attached the oblong, obtuse spores, which at first are partly transparent, 

 containing a few granules, and afterwards become more opaque, filled with 

 endochrome. Colour of the branches and fruit a dark-olive ; of the confer- 

 void filaments somewhat paler. Substance rather rigid, the branches im- 

 perfectly adhering to paper ; the pencils of the ramelli very soft, and closely 

 adhering to paper in drying. 



