156 



The Thread-Mosses. 



may be found in fruit from June to December, on walls 

 and rocks, in sandy, clayey, or gravelly places ; and it is re- 

 markable for continuing to ripen its fruit in the same tuft at 

 successive periods. 



The illustration is somewhat larger than the natural speci- 

 men, and the single capsule considerably magnified, with its 

 lid just starting and showing a portion of the teeth. The 

 stems when growing vary from two lines to half an inch in 

 length, the barren branches being elongated, slender, and 

 fiagelliform, the rest shorter and fastigiate. The leaves are 

 imbricated and erect, more or less spreading, and scarcely 

 crisped when dry; the lower ones are reddish, all of them 

 ovate acuminate, somewhat concave with a refiexed margin, 

 which is sometimes denticulated, and an excurrent nerve. 

 The inflorescence is synoicous, bearing both antheridia and 

 archegonia on the same receptacle. The symmetrical capsule, 

 is, as will be seen by the cut, narrowly pyriform, pendulous, 



or sub-pendulous, with a 

 long neck and rather a 

 small mouth, surrounded 

 by a reddish or purplish 

 border, not becoming con- 

 stricted below the mouth 

 when dry, and having the 

 lid, which is more or less 

 apiculate, and the annulus 

 sub-persistent, or remain- 

 ing on longer than in the 

 allied species. 



Bryum argenteum, or the 

 silvery thread-moss, is also 

 an easily met with species. 

 It fruits in October and No- 

 vember, and is at home almost anywhere, on the ground, by the 

 waysides, on walls, or on roofs of houses, compacting its slender 

 and fragile stems, of from a quarter of an inch to an inch long, 

 into exquisite silvery white patches ; the lower leaves scattered, 

 broadly ovate and apiculate, the upper ones ovate, or ovate- 

 lanceolate, all of them very concave and imbricated, mostly 

 apiculate, entire, not recurved in the margin, the nerve ceasing 

 considerably beneath the point, the points colourless and more 

 or less refiexed, and the areolae lax. 



The oval oblong capsule is attached to a fruit-stalk of about 

 half an inch in length, which is suddenly bent at its junction 

 with the capsule, and the latter is of a purplish or reddish 

 colour when fully ripe, and becomes constricted below the 

 mouth in the dry state, its convex lid obscurely pointed, and 



1, Bryum intermedium; 2, magnified capsule. 



