THUIDIUM. 385 



i-i| finches long, purplish red ; capsule large, thick-walled, 

 arcuate, dark reddish brown ; lid longly and obliquely rostrate ; 

 peristome large, reddish. Dioicous. 



Hab. Shady woods, common. Fr. rare, autumn and winter. 



This very fine and beautiful species cannot be mistaken for any other except the 

 two following ; from these it is readily separated by the apical cell of the branch- 

 leaves, which is here smooth and simply pointed, while in them it is truncate and 

 bi-trifid with terminal papillae. T. recognitum also differs in the branching being 

 bipinnate, not tripinnate, and in the pericheetial leaves not ciliate ; while T. 

 delicatulum may sometimes, but not always be known by its smaller size. 



The broad, complanate, regularly branched stems of this moss have much the 

 appearance of miniature fronds of a fern. 



5. Thuidium delicatulum Mitt. (Hypnum delicatulum. 

 Hedw., nan B. & S.) (Tab. LI. C). 



Very closely resembling slender forms of the last species, and 

 occasionally fully as robust ; bright green above, reddish brown 

 below. Branching tripinnate, the branches and branchlets 

 usually shorter and more numerous and crowded than in that 

 species. Apical cell of the branch-leaves truncate and crowned 

 with 2, more rarely j papillae, so as to appear bifid. Perichaetial 

 bracts fringed, especially the inner ones, with less numerous , 

 shorter cilia. Capsule usually (but not always) rather smaller 

 and less curved. 



Hab. Among rocks and sand by mountain streams ; very rare. Tyn-y-groes, 

 N. Wales. Lake District. Fr. winter. 



There was great confusion between this species and the last until Lindberg 

 detected the wide difference in the apical cells of the branch-leaves. It appears that 

 T. tamariscinum, by far the commoner species of the two in Europe, is replaced in 

 N. America by the present plant. It was unknown in Britain until quite recently, 

 when Mr. Holt discovered it at Tyn-y-groes, with fruit; in the past year (1895) I 

 gathered it abundantly, though rarely fertile, about the Falls of Lodore ; and the Rev. 

 C. H. Binstead has since sent me a fine fruiting specimen gathered by him in the 

 Lake District some years back, but then unrecognised, and labelled T. recognitum. 



About Lodore it grows in quantity, almost always of a more compact, less 

 straggling habit than T. tamariscinum, and more slender in its branching ; but this 

 habit though undoubtedly the more usual, is not constant, for I have seen specimens 

 that could not possibly be known from the more luxuriant forms of T. tamariscinum. 



In one tuft which I gathered in fruit, the sette were much shorter and more 

 slender, and the capsules very small, suberect and hardly curved ; yet there was no 

 appearance of dwarfing. It would appear therefore that the fruit exhibits considerable 

 variation in size. 



In France Philibert has found this species in abundance in one district, near 

 Vals in Ardeche ; it there inhabits damp meadows, a somewhat different habitat from 

 that in which it occurs with us. 



Breidler is said by Husnot (Muscol. Gall. p. 309) to have observed the perichaetial 

 bracts with and without cilia on one and the same specimen. I have found them very 

 slightly developed in some specimens, and in young perichsetia sometimes hardly 

 visible. 



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