48 BRYOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND. 
6. Ditrichum brevirostrum (R. Br. ter.) Broth. in ae and Prantl, 
Pflanzenfamil., Musci, 1, 300 (1901). nite V, fig. 8.] 
Syn. Trichostomum brevirostrum R. Br. ter. in Trans. N. a Inst., 
vol, 29, p. 481, t. xxxix. Trich. raion R. Br. ter. in Trans. 
N.Z. Inst., vol. 29, p. 480, t x, p.p. Ditrichum pdasifideserh 
Broth. in Engler and Pran’l, ‘Mitadi, 1, 300. 
Brown does not describe the inflorescence of this species. It is, I 
think, almost certainly dioicous. I have not seen the male inflorescence, 
but I have examined two or three fruiting-stems without finding any trace 
d 
proximal to the perichaetium, so that I am assured it is neither autoicous 
nor paroicous. 
The capsule is erect and almost symmetrical, at most bats minutely 
Guar should scarcely call it “slightly oblique,” as R. Brown describes 
it—narrowly cylindrical, 1-5-2 mm. long, 0-25 mm. wide, the lid: very short 
indeed and conical. The seta is pale red below, yellowish at summit, and 
varies in the single tuft from 1 em. to 2 cm. in length. The annulus is more 
or less persistent and very broad, almost half the height of the very short, 
filiform peristome teeth, which are scarcely 100» in length, somewhat ha 
gularly coherent, and minutely papillose. I have not been able to measure 
the spores. 
The leaves are small, about 2mm. in length, strongly falcate-secund, 
entire, the upper cells narrow-lmear, the nerve rather stout and reddish 
below, filing the greater part of the subula, and excurrent. The leaves 
are in form and structure very similar to those of D. calcarewm, but strongly 
faleate and with narrower nerve. The stems, too, are loosely gregarious, 
and much shorter than in that species, and scarcely branched, while in that 
they are much branched, tall and densely caespitose. D. flexifolium is 
known at once by the flexuose, silky leaves, the paler seta, and differently 
shaped capsule and li 
D. brevirostrum has not been found, I believe, since its discovery by R. 
Brown, near Lake Te Anau, in 1890. 
INCERTAE SEDIS. 
7. Ditrichum blindioides Broth. in Oefy. af Finska Vet.-Soc. Foerh., 55, 
76 (1898). [Plate V, fig. 9.] 
Syn. pee ——— C. M., MS. in Herb. et Gen. Muse. 
Fr., p. 291 (nomen). 
The type of : walle s Dz subangustifolium, “Tokatoa, Auckland, 
N.Z., Nov., 1881, leg. G. Ziirn,” agrees in every respect with Petrie’s original 
of D. blindioides (Thames, Auckland, d, July, 1896, No. 712 in herb. Beckett), 
except that the areolation is a little denser than in most of the leaves of 
the latter plant; some of the better-developed leaves are identical in the 
two. € areo) ee on in Petrie’s plant, indeed, varies considerably as between 
leaves of the same stem, and this suggests a somewhat abnormal, more or 
less aquatic or “hyptentiorphied fo orm. 
The generic position must, as Brotherus says, remain somewhat uncertain 
in the absence of fruit. I am inclined myself to think it referable to 
Dicranella ; the tendency to a widening of — cells under conditions of 
moisture is a well-known one in Dicra t I have not met with it 
n Ditrichum. C. Miiler’s classification of it zi he Dicranum Scopellae 
