CHARACE^E. 217 



SPECIES X. (?)-C HARA FRAGIFERA. Dnrieu. 



Plate 1922. 



Braun, Babenh. & Stiz. Char. Europ. Exsicc. No. 73a, b. 



Chara fragifera, Durieu in Bull. Soc. Bot. France, 1859, Vol. VI. p. 185. A. Braun, 

 Consp. Char. Europ. p. 7 ; in Monatsber. Akad. Wissensch. Berlin, 1867, p. 863 ; 

 and Fragm. Monog. Char. p. 180. Walilst. Monog. Sver. Norg. Char. p. 35, foot- 

 note. Trimen in Journ. Bot. 1877, p. 353, t. 192. H. & J. Groves in Journ. Bot. 

 1880, p. 102, t. 207, f. 2. Bribing. Man. ed. 8, p. 473. Sydow, Europ. Char. p. 91. 



Dioecious [or rarely monoecious*]. Bright green. Stem very 

 slender, flexible, translucent, spirally striate, clothed with 3 times 

 as many cortical cells as there are branchlets in a whorl, smooth 

 without spine-cells ; subterranean part of the stem producing bulbils 

 at the nodes ; bulbils consisting of an aggregation of cells, forming 

 a subglobular, granulated mass; stipule-cells in 2 whorls, papilli- 

 form, generally very minute and inconspicuous. Branchlets 6 to 10 

 in a whorl, rather long, capillary, flexuous, rarely firm, ascending 

 or slightly incurved, 10- to 16-jointed, their joints clothed with 

 cortical cells, except the smaller apical cell, which is naked, and 

 sometimes also the second, and even the third, from the apex. 

 Bracts in the female plant 1 to 5 on the inner side of the branchlet, 

 the longest of them about half the length of the nucule ; those 

 of the upper node of the branchlet, which do not produce nucules, 

 rudimentary or absent. Bracts in the male plant usually 2, very 

 minute and tooth-like. Nucules in the axils of the bracts, af 1 to 3 

 of the lowest nodes of the branchlet, oval-ovoid, deeply 11- to 

 13-striate, with a rather prominent erect or spreading, persistent 

 crown ; globules on separate plants from those bearing nucules, 

 solitary between the minute bracts at several of the lower nodes of 

 the branchlets, [rarely on the same plant, and placed immediately 

 beneath the nucule]. 



In pools, very rare in West Cornwall and Tresco in the Scilly 

 Isles. First found by Mr. J. Ralfs in 1877. 



England. Perennial. Summer, Autumn. 



A very delicate plant, 3 inches to 1 foot long, resembling the 

 smaller states of C. fragilis ; branchlets mostly § to 1 \ inch long 



* [According to Messrs. Groves ('Journ. Bot. 1882/ p. 350), and they are doubtless 

 right, but I have not seen a monoecious specimen. — N. E. B.] 

 VOL. XII. 2 F 



