9. MAB8ILIACEJE. 



leaves and two rows of submerged leaves. True roots absent. Aerial 

 leaves with well-developed simple sessile or short-petioled lamina 

 sometimes resting on the surface ; submerged longer, without lamina, 

 divided to the base into filiform segments. Sorus or sporocarp a 

 1 -celled capsule, paired or clustered at the base of the submerged 

 leaves, its wall formed of an indusium of 2 cell-layers as in Azolla. 

 Microsporangium with numerous microspores, on a slender stalk of 

 one row of cells radiating from a columella projecting into the cavity 

 of the sporocarp, spores not grouped into " masulae." In the female 

 sporocarp are several short-stalked macrosporangia each with one 

 macrospore, episporium developing a 3-rayed cleft through which 

 the prothallium projects on germination. 

 L. horizontal oblong, not crowded . . . . . .1. nutans. 



L. more or less erect, folded and crowded . . . . .2. cucuUata. 



1. S. natans, Hoffm. 



A small floating plant with horizontally spreading oblong leaves 

 •3- -5" long and about half as broad, rounded or slightly cordate at 

 base, upper side with about 12-20 pinnately arranged rows of hairs 

 or bristles in tufts, under-side thinly matted like the stem with shining 

 pellucid brown hairs. Sporocarps -4-8 in a cluster with regularly 

 hexagonal wall cells. 



Backwaters in the warmer districts, frequent in Purneah ! Santal Parg. ! 

 Probably in Orissa. 



2. S. cucullata, Roxh. 



A small tufted aquatic with sessile leaves broader than long, 

 erect or suberect and very congested on the rhizome, margins in- 

 curved so that the leaf becomes funnel-shaped, -5- -7" Avide, flabellately 

 nerved, upper surface closely papillose, undersurface nearly naked. 

 The sporocarps have not been seen. 



Very abundant in the rainy season, often closely covering the surface of back- 

 waters and carried down by the rivers. Purneah ! Singbhum ! Probably all 

 districts. 



FAM. 9. MARSILIACE^. 



Creeping marsh plants, rarely floating, with a dorsiventral stem 

 and erect subsolitary or 2-ranked leaves with a 4-partite blade of 4 

 obovate leaflets (setaceous and without blade in Pilularia, which does 

 not occur in India), ventral side with a row of roots. Leaves circinate 

 in vernation. Spores of two kinds, macrospores and microspores, con- 

 tained in the same 2-more-celled coriaceous oblong or globose sporan- 

 gium. Male prothallus enclosed in the spore until the development of 

 the antherozoids. Fem. prothallus a few-celled tissue sometimes 

 almost reduced to a single archegonium never separating from the spore. 



In the Salviniacece the sporocarps appear to be a special development of the 

 indusium. In the Marsiliacece the sporocarps are of much more complicated 

 structure, sometimes exceedingly hard, several-celled and filled with parenchyma. 

 It appears to be a metamorphosed segment of the leaf, and it is liorne on the ventral 

 side of the petiole of ordinary foliage leaves on a long stalk, which runs along the 

 dorsal edge of the capsule and gives off lateral veins which branch dichotomously 

 and run to the ventral edge. 



1217 



