14 
B. asper. Lower sheaths and leaves shortly and stiffly hairy ; upper 
ones naked or nearly so ; lower branches of the panicle in from threes 
to sixes. 
B. serotinus. All the sheaths and leaves densely clothed with longer 
hairs ; lower branches of the panicle only two and far apart. 
Descriptions will be found in Wirtgen’s ‘ Flora of the Rhine Pro- 
vince,’ and Von Garcke’s ‘Flora of Northern and Central Germany,’ 
and a specimen of B. serotinus is in Wirtgen’s ‘ Fasciculus of Critical 
Plants but the characters are of very slight value, and, looking over 
our specimens, we do not find that the form subglabrous upwards 
has invariably the larger number of branches. Specimens gathered 
near Thirst, North-east Yorkshire, by Mr. Baker, belong also to B. 
serotinus. 
Lastrea Thelypteris, Presl. In one spot, close by the side of the 
Basingstoke canal, between Frimley Green and Pirbright, Surrey ; 
FI. C. Watson. The rhizomes float in the water of the canal. 
Cliara jtexilis, L. We wish to invite the attention of our members 
to the question of the distribution in this country of C. jtexilis and 
C. syncarpa. The two species agree almost precisely in general habit, 
but the former is monoecious, and the latter dioecious. We believe it 
will be found, contrary to what seems to be the ordinary idea, that 
C. syncarpa is a common plant and C. jtexilis quite a rare one. 
British Tolypellce . — The British Characece, of the section Tolypella , 
need revising as regards their arrangement and nomenclature. In the 
first place, Dr. Alexander Braun, whose long-continued studies of the 
Order render his dicta of the highest authority upon all points con- 
nected with it, identifies the Cliara Borreri, of Babington, with a plant 
( Cliara prolifera , Ziz.) which both he and Kiitzing regard as a robust 
variety of the plant called by Babington C. polysperma. In corrobo- 
ration of this identification, he sends specimens from Basle which mani- 
festly coincide with Borrer’s own specimens of the plant on which 
C. Borreri was founded. For C. polysperma, it now appears (see 
Braun and Rabenhorst’s ‘ Fasciculus of Dried Specimens of the Euro- 
pean Cliaracece ,’ n. 18) there are two names of earlier date, viz. C. in- 
tricata, Roth (Catal. Fasc. i. 125), which goes back to 1797, and 
C. J'asciculata, Amici (Descr. p. 16), imposed in 1827. From the 
other species of the group this is distinguished by its larger size and 
branchlets, with more or less distinctly pointed tips. Dr. Braun 
