244 VEGETABLE ORGANOGRAPHY. 



Section VII. 

 Of the Uepaticce . 



The family of Hepaticaa, though very natural, presents 

 forms too dissimilar for it to be convenient to describe it 

 in a collective manner ; it will be more clear to speak 

 successively of the small number of genera which com- 

 pose it, beginning with those which have most affinity 

 with Mosses. 



The Jungermannia?, which form the most numerous 

 genus of this family, have been unfortunately described 

 by Linneus, who designated their fruit by the name of 

 anther, and confounded under the name of female flowers 

 the true male flowers, and the gemmules. Schmidel was 

 the first to clear up this difficult subject ; Hedwig has 

 confirmed and extended his observations, and Dr. Hooker 

 has thrown a new light upon it in his excellent Mo- 

 nograph. 



The Jungermanniae are all monoecious ; the male 

 flowers are presented under the form of whitish an- 

 thers, solitary, sessile or nearly so, oval or ovate, com- 

 posed of a fine reticulated membrane, full of pollen, and 

 situated along the nerves of the leaves, or more rarely 

 scattered upon the disc. Dr. Hooker has made them 

 known in more than forty species of this genus. These 

 anthers are usually naked, sometimes surrounded by 

 leaves analogous to an involucrum or perigone. The 

 female flowers are produced in very different situations; 

 they are almost always surrounded by a foliaceous or 

 membranous calyx, or perigone, sessile upon the stem or 

 the leaf, and most frequently of a single piece, tubular, 

 or slightly dentated at the apex ; it is only absent in a 

 very small number, as Jungermannia concinnata, and 



