BRITISH JUNGERMANNOE. 
( J. epiphylla.) 
oblong shape, and in length, twice or thrice exceeds that of the calyx. Its texture is 
very thick, carnose, and closely cellulose; its color a dirty white (f. f. II. 12). 
Peduncle from two to four inches long, whitish, cellulose, tipped with the almost spherical 
Capsule (f. f. 13. 14. 15), which is of a pale greyish-brown color, and opens into four 
equal ovate valves : these soon become recurved, and exhibit the 
Spiral filaments, intermixed with the seeds, attached to the inner base of the capsule, in 
the form of a beautiful tuft or pencil (f. 15). The former are extremely long, much 
twisted, composed of a double helix, and enclosed within a pellucid, capillary tube. Their 
color is a pale reddish-brown; that of the seeds, which are of an irregular but more 
or less oblong figure, is an olive-green, inclining to yellow. 
The var. /3 longifolia has the frond greatly lengthened out, so as not unfrequently to exceed three 
or four inches, whilst its width is scarcely more than as many lines. So crowded is it in its 
mode of growth, that it becomes erect in some situations. It is more delicate in its texture 
than a, and has its margin more frequently formed into lobes, in the sinuses of which, Mr. Lyell 
has remarked dark marks, whence have been produced lateral and undivided innovations, about 
half or three quarters of an inch in length, exactly resembling the parent frond. 
y furcigera appears to be most abundant in the autumnal months, when the apices of the fronds are 
produced in a very remarkable manner ; forming innovations, or, perhaps, more properly speaking, 
branched elongations, which are considerably more narrow, and of a paler green than the rest of 
the frond, and have the ultimate branches always more or less forked. As I have already 
observed, the nerve is here at all times very conspicuous, disappearing only immediately below 
the extremities of the divisions. In the month of March, I have lately remarked, on plants of 
this description, that the branches become wider, and of a deeper color, and that they gradually 
partake more of the usual appearance of the plant : roots descend from their under sides, and 
the old fronds seem to be going into a state of decay; so that these curious processes are, in all' 
probability, destined by nature as a means of increasing the species, different from any that has 
yet been noticed in the other Jungermanniae. 
Of the present species, Vaillant was induced to consider, what I have above described as the 
elongated variety, a distinct plant ; and our countryman, Mr. Dickson, has followed him in this 
particular; an opinion ‘with which I would gladly have coincided, but that, for my own part, I 
can neither find in the figure of the one, nor in authentic specimens from the other, any characters 
which will lead me to suppose them other than varieties, and I have consequently thought it best, 
as Lamarck has already done, to make this appearance the /3 of epiphylla. The crisped habit is by 
no means peculiar to it, and seems only to arise from the situation in which it happened to grow ; 
for, among small loose stones, I have observed our common J. epiphylla to have an equally curled 
or waved frond, in consequence of the unevenness of the surface to which it was attached. 
Whatever similarity may exist at first sight between the various species ot those British 
J ungermanniue, which have been termed by botanists, “ frondosce it is certain, that no two of 
