

SHORT NOTES 281 



lin. lane, subacute* Stalk shorter than L. without marked differ- 

 ence in upper part & without Bract or Awn. L. obov° cuneata. 

 Stip. obscurely dentate. Leg. equal Calyx I think this rather to 

 be mollis though the seeds are somewhat different." When he 

 wrote to Babington, Woods had evidently come to the conclusion 

 that the plant was 0. reclinata. The specimen is an unusually 

 branched and spreading one, and the calyx is rather longer in pro- 

 portion to the pod than in most of our specimens, but we do not 

 feel any doubt that it is correctly referred to 0. reclinata. — H. & J. 

 Groves. 



Hypnum riparium L. in New Zealand. — Sir J. D. Hooker 



_ _ 



(Handb. New Zealand Flora, p. 482, footnote) writes: " The Euro- 

 pean H. riparium is stated (Fl. N. Z., ii. 109) to be possibly a 

 native of New Zealand from very imperfect specimens collected 

 at Hawkes Bay by Colenso. I do not now find the specimens, 

 which were very small and incomplete, and I think that the identi- 

 fication is better suppressed.' 1 The occurrence of H. riparium in 

 New Zealand has apparently not been confirmed since ; Paris 

 {Index) does not include New Zealand in its distribution ; while 

 Cardot (Mousses de Vile Fonnose, 1905) gives the distribution thus : 

 Toute l'Europe et l'Am^rique du Nord. Asie : Japon, Tonkin, 

 Thibet. Afrique: Algerie et iles atlantiques. Indique aussi en 

 Australie, a Cuba et a Tile Kerguelen." It may therefore be inter- 

 esting to record its collection in November, 1905, on mud at the 

 bottom of a creek, alt. 800 ft., near Huntervilie, north of Marton, 

 North Island, by Mr. Chas. J. Burgess. It was sent me by Mr. 

 W. H. Burrell, with some other New Zealand mosses from Mr. 

 Burgess, and, though the nerve is rather weak for H. riparium, 

 there can be no doubt of its identity. It is one of the aquatic forms, 

 resembling var. longifolium Schimp., except in the less finely 

 acuminate leaves ; possibly var. elongatum B. & S. There are speci- 

 mens in the Herb. Mus. Brit, from Swan River, Australia, coll. 

 Drummond, and from Kerguelen Land. — H. N. Dixon. 



Seed-dispersal in Euphorbia Cham^esyce L. — Kerner, in his 

 Natural History of Plants, gives Euphorbia as an example of a 

 genus in which the seeds are forcibly expelled, but I do not know 

 if the process has been noted in the smaller species of the genus. 

 E. Chamasyce is a small prostrate annual very closely allied to our 

 E. Pep lis, I grew it last year in my garden, from seed of speci- 

 mens gathered in 1904 by the Amphitheatre of Verona. Wishin w 

 collect some seed for sowing, I brought a plant or two indoors and 

 placed them on a table with their roots in water, and next day 

 found the seeds and capsule-valves strewn for some distance round 

 the plants. Observation showed that this was due to the expulsive 

 action of the capsular walls, and I found on measurement that the 

 seeds reached distances varying from fourteen to twenty-five inches. 



o 



As the seeds are extremely small and light, measuring just 1 mm. 

 in their longest diameter, the whole capsule rarely exceeding 2 mm. 

 in diameter, this implies a high degree of mechanical energy, 

 taking into account the size of the structure involved ; the more so 



