MOSSES. 61 
our British mosses, named after a queer old German 
who first detected the plant in Russia, is the 
Buxbaumia aphylla—first discovered by Sir William 
Hooker in England at Sprouston, near Norwich, 
in a fir plantation, and occurring generally on the 
ground in fir woods throughout Britain, though 
very local and nowhere abundant. From its minute 
size it is apt to be overlooked, even where it 
grows. Its stem is reduced to a little conical 
bulb clothed with minute scales, which are rudimen- 
tary leaves, from which rises up a red tuberculated 
fruit-stalk about an inch high, bearing a large ovate 
oblique capsule crowned with a minute mitre-like 
veil. When this veil falls off, the mouth of the 
capsule is seen to be fringed with three rows of 
teeth ; the inner row forming a plaited or twisted 
membranous cone like the teeth of the Tortulas ; 
the middle row consisting of numerous erect joint- 
less teeth ; and the outer assuming the shape of a 
persistent annulus or ring, with gracefully recurved 
divisions like the petals of a Tiger-lily. When 
the spores in the interior of the capsule are ripe, its 
walls give way on one side, and falling off, expose 
the spore-sac, which looks not unlike the flower of 
the avum or the cal/a within its spathe. The spore- 
sac also bursts to discharge the spores, leaving the 
large columella, with the persistent lid of the cap- 
sule on its top, on the fruit-stalk, This moss 
