242 Podostemonacee. [ Lawia. 
Page 416.— 
Lawia zeylanica Tul.; Willis in Ann. Perad. I, pp. 213, 307 
tt. 9-13 (1902). 
Guru-oya, near Teldeniya; Kelani-ganga, near Kitulgala. 
Var. Parkiniana Willis |. c. p. 215 (1902). 
Thallus smaller than in the type, more definitely branched, 
with long ribbon-like apical lobes, each terminated by one or 
two growing points; leaves usually 3-6 mm. long. Cupule 
with longer bristles; fruit as in last. 
Hakkinda ; Guru-oya. 
Also in S. India (var. malabarica Willis) and Western India (var. 
konkanica Willis). 
There are no specimens of this at Peradeniya and the description of 
this and other species taken from Willis. 
2. DICREA Thouars. 
Submerged herbs with the habit of Fucus and other sea- 
weeds. Thallus various, usually freely floating from attached 
base, exogenously branched, with marginal, ultimately 1- 
flowered secondary shoots; primary axis very short, non- 
flowering, giving rise laterally by endogenous development 
to a thallus of phylogentic root nature, exogenously branched 
with root cap, ribbon-like, cup-like, filamentous, fucoid, 
often crisped or twisted, attached to the rock by a foot or 
by haptera, or by a creeping basal portion, or at all or most 
points, but usually with the distal parts drifting freely out 
in the water. Secondary axes numerous, endogenous on the 
upper sides of the thallus near the edge, or rarely in the 
central parts, consisting in the vegetative season each of a 
fascicle of small leaves with included evanescent axis, and 
all or some of them ultimately floriferous; vascular bundles 
leading to floriferous shoots, and immediately adjacent parts 
of tissue of the thallus, becoming woody in the flowering 
season, the rest of the tissue and the non-floriferous parts 
ultimately falling away (as in most herbarium specimens). 
Floriferous axes exserted, with 2-8 (usually about 4) distich- 
ous imbricated fleshy scaly bracts, the upper larger narrowly 
linear to broadly ovate or helmet shaped, sheathing thicker 
on the upper side, formed by the enlargement of the sheath- 
ing bases of the leaves and the fall or decay of the tips; 
flowers solitary, terminal enclosed in spathes, splitting irre- 
gularly at the tip, in the axils of bracts, opening when 
exposed to air. Flower zygomorphic, naked, enclosed be- 
fore antithesis in a tubular, usually oblanceolate spathe, 
which opens irregularly at the tip, pedicellate, the pedicel 
lengthening as the fruit ripens and shedding its deciduous 
cortex. Stamens 2, rarely 1, monadelphous, with a fila- 
Part III. 
