Peint ER ARTICLES 
A PROTOCORM OF OPHIOGLOSSUM 
(WITH ONE FIGURE) 
In October 1908, Dr. CHARLES R. BARNES and the writer, while 
collecting bryophytes in a little known region of Mexico, botanically 
speaking, on the eastern edge of the great central plateau, about 150 
miles northeast of Mexico City, on the boundary of the states of 
Hidalgo and Puebla, found great quantities of an Ophioglossum, which 
was distributed as O. Pringlei Underwood by the late Dr. C. G. PRINGLE." 
The plants were in such numbers and varied so much in size that some 
days were spent in a thorough exploration of the region, hoping to find 
gametophytes. Of many hundred small plants, only one showed any- 
thing resembling a prothallus. After returning to Chicago, this sup- 
posed prothallus was sectioned and found to be a protocorm. 
The protocorm, buried in the soil to a depth of 5 cm., is almost 
. spherical and 9 mm. in diameter (fig. 1), with a slightly roughened 
surface caused by the irregular collapse of dead cells of the outer cortex. 
The leaf, including the petiole, is 13.5 cm. long, and shows no trace of a 
fertile spike. The remains of the leaf traces of five other leaves are 
present, showing that the protocorm is at least seven years old. e 
growing point is sunken in a pit made by cortical upgrowth. Numerous 
rootlets are penetrating the cortex in all directions, but only three or 
four in the upper region of the corm have reached the soil, and have 
partly decayed. The outermost cells of the cortex have lost their con- 
tents and collapsed, forming a protecting layer. These empty outer cells, 
as well as those of the partly decayed rootlets, are infested with fungal 
hyphae, which, however, do not enter the living cortical cells. The cells 
of the cortex are very full of starch. 
*The specimens were submitted to Dr. J. M. GREENMAN, who has made the 
following statement in reference to them: “Upon comparison of the material in 
collections determined as O. Pringlei with known species of this genus, I am unable 
to find a single character to separate it from our northern species QO. vulgatum L. So 
far as I can find, O. oulgatum never has been definitely recorded from Mexico, but we 
have it represented from different stations from Canada and Maine to Arizona, and 
it would not be unparalleled by other cases to have it turn up in Southern Mexico. 
I should be inclined, therefore, to regard these Mexican specimens as conspecific with 
G, Si ag LL 
Botanical Gazette, vol. 52] | [478 
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