294 Haynes: THE GENUS SPHAEROCARPOS 
considered them the same, for in his Hep. Bor.-Am. (Tickets of 
the specimens, 34. 1873) he cites under “ 738. Sphaerocarpus 
Berteri”’ the following stations: “ California, Bolander, bigelow ; 
Texas, Wright.’ Later he recognized his error in identifying 
these plants with the very different South American species and 
described the Texan specimens as S. ¢exanus Aust. and the Cali- 
fornian as S. californicus Aust. Herr Stephani remarks (Bull. 
Herb. Boiss. '7: 656. 1899) that he had not seen S. ¢exanus, that 
it is not preserved in Austin’s herbarium in Manchester, that the 
plant seems to be wholly lost, but that the very small spores 
(‘‘ coccus 63 »”’) will make possible its recognition. It has been 
my good fortune to examine three specimens of S. ¢exanus col- 
lected by Wright in Texas and now preserved in the herbaria of 
the New York Botanical Garden and of Columbia University. 
Two of these came from the Underwood herbarium, one of them 
being labeled “ Sphaerocarpus texranus Aust. (type ?), San Marco, 
Tex., C. Wright, 1849, ex coll. W. H. Pearson 1894,’ and the 
other ‘“‘ Sphaerocarpus texanus, San Marco, Texas, C. Wright, 
1849, ex Sulliv.” The third is in the herbarium of Columbia Uni- 
versity, is labeled “ Sphaerocarpus texanus Aust. Texas, leg. 
Wright, ex herb. Aust.,” and was communicated by W. H. Pear- 
son in 1890. Austin, in connection with the original description 
of S. ¢exanus, compares it with “S. Micheli,” stating the S. texanus 
is distinguished by its smaller frond, its involucre less obtuse at 
the apex, and the spores almost a half smaller. The coccus is 
described as about 1/400 of an inch (62.5 ») in diameter, while 
that of S. Micheli’ is 1/200-1/250 of an inch in diameter. The 
present writer finds the chief differences separating S. seranus from 
S. Sphaerocarpos (S. Michelii) to lie in the more pointed fusiform- 
clavate rather than obovoid involucres, in the meshes of the sur- 
face of the spore-tetrads being nearly twice as wide, and in the high 
ridges forming these meshes being sinuous or crenulate-margined 
or irregularly dissected, or occasionally rising into obtuse spines 
at the points of intersection, but never forming sharp needle-like 
spines as in S. Sphaerocarpos. I have not been able to find in the 
Texan material collected by Wright any spore-tetrads as small as 
those described by Austin, the smallest seen measuring 72 /. 
There is, however, a surprising variation in the size of the tetrads 
