(J . albicans.) 
BRITISH JUNGERMANNEE. 
Obs. Fructification, both male anil female, is produced plentifully in the spring and early 
summer months, if the weather prove moist. Gemmiferous plants are equally common 
throughout the summer. 
Plant, for the most part growing in large ancl densely-crowded tufts, covering a surface of 
ground six or seven inches in diameter ; at other times shooting up among Mosses, and 
various species of Jungermanniae, in a more loose and straggling manner. 
The Roots, in general, originate from the lower part of the plant, and consist of minute 
fibrous, pellucid, simple radicles. 
Sterns erect, from an inch to an inch and a half or two inches in length, simple, or once 
or twice divided in a dichotomous manner, and often producing innovations ; they are 
flexuose and filiform, of a pale yellowish-brown color, approaching to a red. 
Leaves bifarious and distichous, more or less closely placed, in their lower part amplexicaul 
and slightly decurrent, divided from the extremity to within one third of the base, 
into two unequally-sized, conduplicate, appressed, vertical lobes, of which the inferior 
is the largest, and is half a line or more in length, oblong, acute, plane, and a little 
curved on one side, so as to be somewhat scymitar-shaped ; the superior lobe, or lobule, 
differs from the one just described, in being only about half its size, and of an oblongo- 
ovate figure, acute, and by no means scymitar-shaped : it is closely appressed, in a 
diagonal direction, to the inner side of the larger lobe ; both are serrated at the point, 
though the lobule is so in a slighter degree than the lobe. The texture of the leaf 
is of two kinds, the greater part being composed of ovate cellules, forming a very 
evident, though minute, sort of reticulation ; whilst from the central base arises a 
pellucid mark, which, branching off at the division of the leaf, forms the letter V (f 9) 
and disappears a little below the point of the lobes. In this mark the cellules are 
seen to be extremely narrow, cylindrical tubes, very much longer than those of the 
circumference of the leaf. The color is sometimes a deep, but more frequently a pale, 
yellowish green, with a brownish tinge in those leaves which are nearest the extremity 
of the plant, and which thus appear as if scorched with heat. When dry the color is 
universally paler, and after having been long kept in the herbarium, becomes almost 
white. 
Perigonial leaves (f. 10) more crowded than the rest, and situated upon a swollen part 
of the stem (f. 6): they resemble the cauline leaves, except in having a ventricose base, 
where the anthers are placed, and the apex is not unfrequently much recurved. 
The Perichcetial leaves are large, and with their base entirely sheath the lower part of the 
calyx; their lobes, too, are Recurved at the apices. 
Male Fructieication (f. f. 6. 10. 11) I have seen upon the same plant with the female, as 
well as upon different individuals. The anthers are placed in clusters of three or four in the 
axdte of each perigonial leaf, and are ovate approaching to round, strongly reticulated in the 
older ones, whilst m the younger anthers this appearance is scarcely perceptible : their color is 
an olive-green before the emission of the pollen, afterwards white and pellucid. The footstalks 
are about the length of the anther, white, jointed. 
