73 — 
also. With the known distribution of this striking hepatic thus limited, it was 
an agreeable surprise last February to receive from Dr. M. S. Young, of the School 
of Botany of the University of Texas, some vigorous living plants labeled “Tes- 
sellina” and accompanied by the information that they were abundant in cer- 
tain open spots in the “upland post-oak woods” in the vicinity of Austin. The 
specimens bore mature sporogonia and seemed to exhibit no characters 7 that 
could be depended upon to separate them from the single recognized species of 
the genus, currently known as Tessellina pyramidata. The spores of the Texas 
plant average considerably larger than those of specimens from southern Europe, 
but it is doubtful if this difference is sufficiently pronounced and constant to 
justify a specific segregation. The spores, measured the longest way, show 
diameters ranging from 125 to 175^. A specimen from lower Austria (Krypt. 
Exsicc. 181 ) has spores with maximum diameters of 104-115^; one from Portu- 
gal, 121-142^; while one from Paraguay ( Balansa 3709 ) approaches the Texas 
plant with spores 136-1 50^ in maximum diameter. It should be added that 
the Texas plant is evidently dioicous, like plants of the genus elsewhere, but 
antheridial individuals have not been found in the two sendings thus far made 
by Dr. Young. It is to be hoped that these will soon be met with in Texas or 
that they may appear in the thriving cultures of the plant that have been es- 
tablished in the propagating houses of the New York Botanical Garden. 8 The 
Texas specimens, it may be said, show the long conspicuous ventral scales that 
are characteristic of the form of the species described by Bischoff as Oxymitra 
paleacea. 
It has been remarked above that the single recognized species of this genus 
is currently known as Tessellina pyramidata and this is doubtless a defensible 
statement, though Stephani 9 in his Species Hepaticarum has adopted for it the 
name Rupinia pyramidata , and the name Oxymitra pyramidata has also enjoyed 
recognition within rather recent times. The nomenclature of both genus and 
species is somewhat involved. Under the provisions of the “American Code” 
it seems clear that the legal name for the genus is Oxymitra rather than Tessel- 
lina and it may scarcely be doubted that the usual interpretations of the “Vienna 
Rules” would lead to the same result. If the doubtful Riccia incrassata of Ber- 
tero is ignored, as it must be unless an authentic specimen should prove it to 
apply to this plant, the legal specific name of the plant, under the American 
Code, is apparently paleacea , though under the Vienna Rules the specific name 
pyramidata is probably still defensible. The main facts bearing upon the nomen- 
clature of the genus and species, from the point of view of adherents of the 
American Code, may be summarized as follows: 
7 Mr. Wm. Edw. Nicholson, of Lewes, Sussex, England, to whom I have sent specimens, has 
directed my attention to the fact that the radial walls of the epidermal cells bounding the pores 
or stomata in the Texas plant are more strongly and more abruptly thickened than are the cor- 
responding walls in European specimens, so that the rays of the five- or six- pointed star surrounding 
the pore often have ovoid or dome-shaped rather than lanceolate-acuminate outlines. 
8 As these notes are going to press, antheridia have been found in the living specimens, and 
their position seems to warrant a new specific name for the Texan plant. Further notes will 
follow. 
