“ 
LESSONIA 59 
independent plants apparently anastomose more or less; the first 
dichotomy may be almost at the base itself or 4-5 cm. above; 
the blades are 8-30 mm. wide and their margins have rather ob- 
scure blunt teeth or are subentire; some of the blades are fertile, 
the sori forming irregular longitudinal, commonly median, bands 
or blotches 5-16 mm. wide. 
Nos. 09150 p.p. and 09612 appear to be entirely destitute of 
muciferous canals, both as to blades and stipes, and from Bory’s 
figures of sections of the stipe, one may infer that the same condi- 
tion obtains in the stipe, at least, of his Cape Horn type of the 
species. But in Dr. Coker’s 197, collected on the same day and 
in the same locality as his 09612, and agreeing with it essentially 
in size and habit, muciferous canals are abundant in the blades 
and in the greater part of the stipe, becoming obscure, however, 
towards the extreme base. In the blade these muciferous canals 
are often large and conspicuous, sometimes extending from the 
epidermis nearly to the compact medulla. It is possible that 197 
and 09612 represent two closely allied species standing in about 
the same relation as Laminaria saccharina (L.) Lamour. and L. 
Agardhii Kjellm., but more material would be needed to establish 
any such conclusion. No. 197 certainly has the form and size of 
L. nigrescens; it has not the dendroid habit of L. fuscescens Bory 
or the broad blades of L. ovata Hook. f. & Harv.,* both of which 
are attributed to the Pacific coast of South America. And it is to 
be noted that Hooker and Harvey apparently attribut iferou 
canals to the stipe of L. nigrescens, remarking} that they [“ air- 
cells’’] are “copious in the stems of the former [L. fuscescens], and 
much rarer in the latter [L. migrescens]" and in their figuret of a 
cross section of a fertile blade of L. nigrescens they represent numer- 
ous large cavities that can hardly be anything other than mucifer- 
ous canals. Guignard§ finds muciferous canals sometimes present 
in stipe and blade and sometimes entirely wanting in specimens 
of Lessonia nigrescens coming from the collections of Bory and of 
Lamouroux, and he suspects that there may have been some con- 
‚а Skottsberg (loc. cit. 73) unites L. fuscescens and L. ovata under L. flavicans Bory, 
which seems to be the oldest name for what is currently known as L. fuscescens. 
Т Fl. Antarct. 460. 184 
t Гос. cit. pl. 167—168. f. c. 
$ Ann. Sci. Nat. Bot. УП. 15:44. 1892. 
