— 8o — 



BRANCHED PARAPHYSES OF BRYUM ROSEUM. 



By E. J. Hill. 



In the early part of November, 1902, specimens of Bryum roseum 

 Schreb. were collected. They grew in a clay loam soil on the bank of a creek 

 at Elmhurst, 111 , their most common associates being Atrichum ajigusta- 

 tum and Porella platyphylla. Being without fruit they were placed in a 

 packet and laid aside for future study, since their appearance suggested that 

 they might be male plants. The packet kept in the warm air of a room soon 

 became dry and was not opened iintil the end of January of this year. 

 Nearly all the plants examined bore abundant archegonia and in most of 

 them the paraphyses were prevailingly branched, the cells well filled with 

 chlorophyl and had the form of proton ema. Schimper calls attention to this 

 chlorophyllose feature, remarking in his synopsis (Synopsis Muse. Eur., 

 Introductio, p. xv. ) : "If we consider color, the paraphyses of B. roseum are 

 seen to be green and filled with grains of chlorophyl." Limpricht (Die Laub- 

 moose, 2:445, 1895,) repeats the statement when mentioning the male flow- 

 ers: "Antheridia very numerous, mixed with filiform chlorophyllose, para- 

 physes and little leaflets." 



This property of chlorophyl-bearing is a common occurrence in mosses 

 with clavate paraphyses, as those of Futiaria, Aphanoregma, and the 

 Physcomitraceae in general, but in my experience is infrequent in those with 

 filiform paraphyses. 



I do not quite understand the statement of Ruhland (Die Natiirlichen 

 Pflanzenfamilien, 1 :3, p. 217) that paraphyses "always contain chlorophyl," 

 since from the context he does not seem to limit the property to any form of 

 them, but is concerned rather with their number. They generally appear 

 hyaline or of some other color than green, as yellow, red or purple. It is 

 possible that under chlorophyl are included the various pigments into which 

 it may be transformed or broken up, such as xanthophyl, erythrophyl, etc., 

 but the statement is a very broad one at best. 



There is a strong probability that these branched paraphyses are pro- 

 tonemic in character and function, though no buds were found or developed 

 on them. Some were kept moist under a bell-glass for several weeks but 

 left attached to the plants. It resulted chiefly in increasing their length and 

 probably the number of branched forms, as in such cases those without a 

 branch were greatly in the minority. Detached examples placed under 

 other conditions of growth finally shriveled; but this was doubtless due 

 to imperfect facilities for cultivation. Such paraphyses cannot' be distin- 

 guished from the ordinary protonemata of mosses before the appearance of 

 buds. The cylindrical cells are plump and devoid of the shrunken look com- 

 mon to most filiform paraphyses. Buds do not necessarily appear on pro- 

 tonema. Goebel, (Organography of Plants, 1 : 239, 1900,) treating of the 

 influence of external stimuli, makes the statement: "Moss-buds appear 

 upon the protonema only when the intensity of light is higher than that 

 which is required for the normal growth of protonema. If the formation 

 of buds does not take place, the protonema may theoretically continue its 

 growth to an unlimited extent." 



