A GOSSIP 

 ABOUT TWO NEW LINCOLNSHIRE CRYPTOGAMS'. 

 (EYPNUM SALEBBOSUM and GETRARIA ISLANDICA). 



By F. Arnold Lees, F.L.S. 



The Naturalist will, I daresay, be thouglit a fitting place for a record 

 of the detection, near Market-Rasen, very recently, of two plants 

 hitherto unrecorded for Lincolnshire — -the little-known moss, BracJiy^ 

 thecium salebrosum, Hoffm. ; and the alpine lichen, Cetraria islandicaj 

 JAnn, called familiarly " Iceland Moss." With the latter I shall 

 couple a club moss seen growing near Crossby, a few years back, by 

 the Rev. W. Fowler. 



Their occurrence in North Lincolnshire merits a detailed notice, 

 and may in addition be made a medium for the conveyance of certain 

 views as to plant-distribution. 



I. As to the true moss. B. salehrosum would appear (and Mr. 

 Hobkirk will perhaps correct me in a footnote if I am wrong) to be 

 either a really rare species, or else one ill-understood and often over- 

 looked : and it seems to me that the latter is especially likely to be 

 the case, for a reason to be stated presently. It is clearly a moss of 

 wide dispersion, latitudinally if not altitudinally, for in Mr. Hobkirk's 

 Synopsis of the British Mosses only two wide-apart localities are given, 

 and those named specially, viz : " Near Kirkham Abbey, Yorks. 

 (R. Spruce) " and " Sussex (Mitten)." I judge it little-known 

 because the mention of stations thus pointedly is in that work a plan 

 of treatment followed only in the case of very rare species. 



On Dec. 3rd, 1877, I gathered a moss which appeared to me to be 

 a form of B. rutabulwn — a very common, variable species — but upon 

 sending specimens to Mr. H, Boswell, of Oxford, he detected differences 

 that had not struck me in my perfunctory examination, and pro- 

 nounced them to be veritable salehrosum. 



This moss grows amongst true rutabulwn^ upon fallen branches, 

 decaying tree stumps, and a mossy bank, by the road from Rasen to 

 Tealby, where it borders a wooded eminence of the Greensand known 

 as Hamilton Hill — at least as yet I have only found it there in this 

 county. It is rather plentiful in the barren state although fruiting 

 capsules do occur sparingly, growing mingled as I have said with 

 N. S., Vol. hi., Feb., 1878. 



