THE BRYOLOGIST 



Vol. XIX 



May, 1916 



No. 3 



NOTES ON FUNARIA 



E. J. Hill 



In Grout's "Mosses with Hand-lens and Microscope" it is stated that 

 Funaria americana Lindb. had been collected in but five or six localities as far 

 as recorded at the time of publication of that work. The states in which it 

 occurred are given as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Minnesota. To thees 

 Illinois can now be added. In April, 1903, I found it growing in the thin soil 

 that caps a low cliff of limestone opposite the village of Lemont. The next 

 month it was found again on the soil which lodges in crevices and on narrow 

 shelves of the face of the cliff. In the summer of 1904 I came across it once 

 more under similar conditions of growth on a cliff about a mile northwest of the 

 village of Lockport. These stations are all on the west side of the Des Plaines 

 River, the one at Lockport six miles below those at Lemont. The cliffs are rem- 

 nants of the old banks of the river when the water of the upper lakes flowed 

 southward to the Mississippi through the Chicago Outlet, and lie at some dis- 

 tance from its present channel. No similar outcrops of cliff-like structure are 

 found between the two localities. 



The moss is a small one, hardly looking like a Funaria. The stems are 2-5 

 mm. high, but the greatest unlikeness in size, as compared with the common 

 Cord-moss, is in the length of the seta, which in fruiting examples in my collec- 

 tions is from 2 to 12 mm. high. Is is gregarious; or the stems may be more 

 crowded, forming more or less caespitose tufts, sometimes mixed with other 

 mosses. The habitat is well exposed to the sun's rays, becoming very dry in summer, 

 making the moss a pronounced xerophyte. The hepatic, Reboulia hemispherica, 

 is associated with it or grows under the same conditions, taking on a very xero- 

 phytic form, its parts much curled or becoming almost tubulose from the upward 

 curling of their margins. Like Grimaldia fragrans (Balb.) Corda, which grows 

 on the cliff at Lemont, Funaria americana is not attached to the underlying 

 rocks, but roots in the thin soil that finds a resting place upon them. 



This species is one of the earliest fruiting mosses of spring, the sporophyte 

 starting in March, probably as soon as the days become warm enough, and 

 ripening its spores the last of April or in May in this latitude. Specimens taken 

 at the Lockport station April 6, 1908, mostly retained the calyptras, but some 

 capsules were quite well advanced. The year after finding it there it was ex- 

 amined for fruit April 29. The opercula were mostly in place, but some had 

 fallen off and the moss had begun to shed its spores. In those first found at 

 Lemont, April 16, 1903, the hoods were generally gone, but the capsules mostly 

 The March number of the Bryologist was published April 25, 1916. 



