LYCOPODIUM. 221 



Lycopodium clavatum, Li7mwu& 

 Common Club-moss. (Plate XX. fig. 6.) 



This Club-moss is of procumbent habit, having vigorous 

 creeping stems often many feet in length, much branched, 

 and attached to the soil here and there by means of tough 

 pale-coloured wiry-looking roots. The young branches, 

 ■which are very thickly clothed with leaves, grow rather 

 upwards at first, but soon all become prostrate, and cross 

 and interlace, forming a close-matted tuft, whence comes, 

 in fact, the name it bears in Sweden — Matte-grass, or 

 mat-grass. The stems are densely clothed with small, 

 narrow, lanceolate, flattish leaves, which remain fresh 

 through the winter ; they are smooth on the margin, or 

 very slightly toothed, and terminate in a long white fila- 

 mentous point, which gives the branches a somewhat 

 hoary appearance. The upright stalks supporting the 

 spikes are bare of leaves, but have at intervals whorls of 

 smaller bodies closely pressed to the stalk, and tipped with 

 shorter but broader membranous chaffy processes ; they 

 are also of a pale yellowish-green colour. 



The spikes of fructification are usually over ai} inch in 

 length, and are supported by a stalk of about twice their 



