CHARACE^E. 



173 



CLASS II.-OELLULARES. 



Perennial or more rarely annual herbs which have a stem composed 

 wholly of cellular tissue, producing adventitious roots and usually 

 leaves or branches, more rarely reduced to that combination of 

 stem and leaf termed a thallus, as in the Class III. (Thallophyta). 

 Spores produced after fertilisation of the archegonia by the 

 antherozoids, either solitary within a spirally marked indehiscent 

 nucule, or numerous and contained in a spore case {capsule or sporo- 

 gonium), which is usually elevated on a stalk. Antherozoids con- 

 tained in the cells of coiled filaments or oblong vesicles, and dis- 

 charged by the rupture of the cells. 



ORDER XCYL— CHAR ACE JE.* 



Aquatic annual or perennial herbs having branched stems, of 

 which the internodes consist of a single large cell, which is either 

 naked or covered by a layer of slender parallel cortical-cells, and 

 frequently coated with a deposit of carbonate of lime. Stems fur- 

 nished at the nodes with whorls of branchlets (leaves of many authors). 

 At the base of the verticillate branchlets there are in many species 

 two or more whorls, rarely only one whorl of stipule-cells (involucral 

 spines, Babington — stipulodes of Messrs. Arthur Bennett and H. and J. 

 Groves). Branchlets simple, or one or more times forked into rays, 

 or with partial or rarely complete whorls of secondary branchlets 

 (bracts). Male and female organs developed at the extremity of the 

 branchlets, or at their nodes in the axils of the bracts. Male organs 

 {globules) spherical, at first green, afterwards red or yellowish, con- 

 sisting of 8 plates or shields, on the inside of each of which there is a 

 central projecting cell, termed the manubrium, terminated by a globular 

 cell, called' the capitulum, or head, which produces 6 secondary capi- 

 tula, or heads, from each of which proceed four long coiled filaments 

 divided transversely into very numerous cells, in each of which is 

 formed a biciliated antherozoid. Female organs (nucules) subglobular 

 or ovoid or fusiform, reddish-yellow or olive, consisting of a nucleus 



* In the general arrangement and nomenclature of the species of this Order, I have 

 followed the eighth edition of Babington's ' Manual of British Botany,' pp. 468 and 

 473. The admirable papers of Messrs. H. and J. Groves in ' Journal of Botany,' 1880, 

 have given me much assistance, especially by quoting synonyms from works to which I 

 had not access, and giving the localities, so far as known, in which the species occur. 



