22 ENGLISH BOTANY 
In ponds and ditches. Very common, and generally distributed, 
extending to Orkney, but apparently not to Shetland. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Early Summer. 
Fronds } to } inch long, usually rather broader towards the apex, 
and generally apiculate at the base, bright green above, paler beneath, 
giving off at the base at an angle young fronds, which are generally un- 
equal in size, and sometimes only on one side; epidermal cells bounded 
by strongly sinuous lines. The fronds perish in autumn, and the buds 
remain at the bottom of the water until spring, when they rise to the 
surface, and rapidly increase in size. The plant, therefore, should no~ 
more be called an annual than a tulip or crocus, of which the bulb or — 
corm is annually reproduced. The flowers are extremely minute and 
produced from a small lateral cleft towards the base of the frond, from 
which 2 anthers (male flowers), one developed before the other, and 
a single female flower, reduced to a flaskshaped ovary, with a con- 
spicuous style. ‘The fruit I have not seen. 
Lesser Duckweed. 
French, Lenticule naine. German, Kleinste Wasserlinse. 
According to Fraas’s ‘‘ Synopsis Plantarum Flore Classicew,” this species is the 
txpn of Theophrastus (iv. 11), and the paxoe of Dioscorides (iv. 88). 
Section II].—TELMATOPHACE.  Schleid. 
Fronds floating, herbaceous, apiculate, not tailed, each giving rise 
to a single root-fibre, and furnished with naked baso-lateral clefts, from 
which young fronds are produced, which remain sessile and attached 
only for a short time to the parent frond; cells of the epidermis 
bounded by sinuous lines. Flowers from a cleft in the margin of the 
frond. Ovary containing 2 to 7 anatropous ovules. Fruit 2- to 7- 
seeded, bursting transversely. 
SPECIES II—LEMNA GIBBA. Linn. 
Pirate MCCCXCVI. 
Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ. et Helv. Vol. VII. Tab. XIV. Fig. 16. 
Billot, F). Gall. et Germ. Exsicc. No. 2940. 
Telmatophace gibba, Schleid. Kunth. Enum. Pl. Vol. III. p. 6. 
Fronds floating, opaque, thick, flat above, at length very convex 
beneath, oval-obovate or suborbicular, entire, not tailed, subapiculate, 
the young fronds sessile, each frond giving rise to a single root-fibre, 
the under surface at length spongy and greatly swollen. 
In ditches and ponds. Rather local, but generally distributed in 
