Underwood and Lloyd : Lycopodium 105 



Range: Jamaica (Wilson, Jenman, Underwood 181), [Mar- 

 tinique?, Plumier\. This plant is apparently less common and 

 less widely distributed than L. reflexum. 



3. Lycopodium polycarpum (Sod.) sp. nov. 



Lycopodium reflexum y polycarpum Sod. Crypt. Vase. Quitenses 



569. 1893. (Type from Ecuador.) 



A terrestrial plant with verticillate distant leaves 35-40 cm. 

 high. Stem rather slender, 1.5 mm. or less thick, four times 

 dichotomous, the ultimate divisions elongate ; leaves and sporo- 

 phyls distant, in nearly regular whorls, about 8-ranked, 4-5 mm. 

 long by 0.8 mm. wide, linear-lanceolate, acute, serrulate, recurved, 

 in drying bent back to form a semicircle; sporangia reniform, 1.5 

 mm. wide, laterally exceeding the sporophyls in width. 



Ecuador : 1899, Sodiro (type) ; Spruce 4973. 



We have excellent specimens from Father Sodiro which show 

 a relation to Z. reflexum but are amply distinct as a species. The 

 large sporangia coupled with the distant leaves make the former 

 unusually prominent, a fact that is recorded in the name. The 

 species is apparently most closely related to L. intermedium Spring, 

 of which we have not seen the type, but in any case that name is 

 antedated by L. intermedium Blume, by a number of years. 



4. Lycopodium Sieberianum Spring, Monog. Lycop. 1: 23, excL 



syn. 1842. (Type from Martinique, Sieber jd.) 



Spring apparently confused with specimens of a very distinct 



species, various figures, some of which had already served as 



types of other species. On receiving a very distinct plant from 



St. Kitts we had thought at first to describe it as new on the 



o 



strength of these citations, but on examination of Sieber 56 at 

 Berlin the past summer (the plant on which Spring based his 

 name and in part his description) we find that our St. Kitts plant 



separated as Z. rigidum, basing his description on Dillen's plate which was taken di- 

 rect from Plumier. In the absence of type specimens there are many who would make 

 the two names synonyms, and rename Gmelin's species. But to one familiar with both 

 plants in the field the names reflexum and rigidum assume greater importance and 

 significance. The liability of error in interpretation in the purely " literary revision " 

 of plant names without the supplemental knowledge of the plants themselves, receives 

 here a capital illustration, and all such revision is to be deprecated. Plain common 

 sense would suggest the continuance of the two names accepted above as representing 

 the spirit of the founders of the two species concerned. 



