On Utricularia prehensilis, E. Meyer. 
BY 
BERTHA CHANDLER, M.A., B.Sc. 
With Plate LVII. 
UTRICULARIA PREHENSILIS—a sub-aquatic species found in 
various localities in Tropical and South Africa, and Madagascar— 
is of considerable interest, as it presents many important differ- 
ences from such truly aquatic species as U. emarginata, recently 
described by me.* 
The material used in the following description was grown from 
a seed taken from the herbarium by Mr. L. Stewart, Foreman 
of the Glass Department, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. He 
made the following notes: ‘“ Sown in the last week of June the 
seed germinated in the second week of July 1909. The first 
flowers appeared on the first of June 1910. By October a mass 
of flowering material was obtained.” Natural pollination and 
fertilisation are not so easy or so speedy processes in this as 
in other species of Utricularia, but some seed has been procured 
through artificial pollination, sufficient to give promise of a 
satisfactory examination of the germination later on, as well as 
of the determination of the position of the species in Gliick’s 
Classification. 7 
In its general appearance Utricularia prehensilis (Fig. 1) 
presents some striking differences from the aquatic species, 
for its leaves are riband shaped, not terete and linear like 
those of U. vulgaris, emarginata, and others. The riband 
leaves float on the surface of the water, which covers the mud 
in which the plant thrives. The flower-stalks are aerial, rising 
to a considerable height, and, as the name of the plant 
suggests, twine round a support. The direction seems always to 
be dextrorse. 
A short general description of the plant, with figures, 
is given by Stapf}, and he mentions that this species is 
* Chandler in Ann. Bot., xxiv (1910). : 
+Gliick, Biologische und morphologische Untersuchungen iiber 
_Wasser-und Suiimpfgewachse, Teil ii. Jena, 1 
t Stapf in Hooker’s Icones Plantarum, t. 2798. 
(Notes R,B.G., Edin., No. XXII, November tgr1-] 
