HANDBOOK OF BRITISH HEPATICiE. 



root. Leaves alternate, bifarious, smallest at the 

 base and most distant, ovate and 

 concave, margins entire, adpressed 

 to the stem or a little spreading ; 

 the rest considerably larger, round- 

 ish or subquadrate, spreading 

 sometimes recurved, base decurrent, 

 margins with one or two or three 

 large spiny teeth, irregularly 

 placed, so that no two precisely 

 agree (fig. 82). Flowers dioicous. 

 Perianth longer than the cauline 

 leaves, emerging from the involucre, 

 obovate pear-shaped, turgid ob- 

 tusely, 3 (rarely 4-5 ) angled, mouth 

 at first connivent, at length rather 

 toothed or ciliate. Calyptra pyriform, a little 

 smaller than the perianth, enclosing twelve abor- 

 tive pistillidia. 



GENUS 17. HYGROBIELLA, Spruce. 



Stems with a rhizomatose base, fixed to the 

 matrix by rooting flagella, without radicles. 

 Flagelliferous branches postical, foliose lateral 

 and axillary ; leaves transverse, complicately 

 bilobed ; stipules small or none. Flowers 

 dioicous. Perianth large, fusiform or oblong, 

 obtusely trigonous above, with a very small 

 mouth. On Cephalozia p. 15. 



Spruce, in comparing the typical species, says, 

 //. laxifolia recedes from Cephalozia in having 

 lateral branches, and in being (normally) quite 



