THE TRAILING LYCOPODIUMS. 83 



The old leaves are dark green in colour, but the new 

 growth is light silvery green and very noticeable in 

 early summer. Owing to a slight constriction at the 

 place where each season's growth begins, it is very easy 

 to ascertain the age of each branch by counting the 

 constrictions. 



About midsummer the plant begins to put up its 

 fruiting parts. These are simply transformed branches, 

 and often indicate the relationship by producing one or 

 more sterile branchlets instead of the usual cones of 

 spores. The fruiting-spikes are always borne at the 

 tips of branches of the previous year, in the position 

 that sterile branches hold on other branch-tips of equal 

 age. The fruiting peduncles are most abundant on the 

 older parts of the plant, but any branch that is more 

 than a year old may produce them. Sometimes in a 

 distance of a single foot along the main stem there will 

 be a dozen or more peduncles, each with three or four 

 strobiles, or fruit-cones, at the summit. 



The stalks or peduncles are from three to eight inches 

 in length, the average being about five inches. They 

 are nearly of the same diameter as the stem, but, owing 

 to the absence of leaves, appear much slenderer. The}/ 

 are clothed with appressed bracts like the leaves in out- 

 line, but which are smaller and at maturity are yellowish 

 in colour. The strobiles are from one to three inches 

 long, thicker than the peduncle, and consist of a great 

 number of close-set, little ovate or heart-shaped sporo- 

 phylls with thin ragged edges and soft bristle tips, each 

 covering a yellow kidney-shaped spore-case. The spores 

 are bright yellow and are produced in prodigious quanti- 

 ties. They are ripe in early autumn. The lycopodium 

 powder of the shops is composed of the spores of this 



