SHADY EQUISETUM. 
65 
lish Botany ’ ^ represents the fertile and barren steins correctly, 
but neither in the figure nor description do I obserYe any 
reference to the combination of fruit and branches on the same 
stem. Dietrich’s figuref has fruit and branches on one stem, 
but neither separate. 
The roots and rhizoma precisely resemble those of the pre- 
ceding species, the former being small, fibrous, sinuous, often 
divided, and black ; the latter dark brown and striated, and ex- 
tending horizontally. 
The stems are of three kinds ” Jirst, bearing fructification 
only ; secondly^ bearing fructification and branches ; and thirdly 
bearing branches only. The fertile stems are four to six inches 
in height, slightly striated when living, more evidently so when 
dried ; they are of a pale whitish-green colour : the sheaths are 
very large and loose, and nearly white, in some specimens al- 
most of an ivory whiteness, with a brown ring at the base of 
the teeth, which are from fifteen to twenty in number, long, al- 
most setiform, ver'y slightly flexuous, pale brown, and furnished 
with dilated, membranous, almost transparent, whitish margins. 
The catkin is terminal, oval, and of a very pale brown colour ; at 
first it appears sessile, but when mature its footstalk is very 
obvious : the scales are forty or fifty in number ; in figure they 
are somewhat hexagonal, and have a conspicuous central depres- 
sion, surrounded by six or seven nearly circular and slightly 
convex compartments. The catkin is ripe in April. 
When the stem bears both fructification and branches, a cha- 
racter overlooked by British botanists in their descriptions, but 
one of common though not constant occurrence, the branches 
are disposed in whorls four to six in number, the first being 
placed at the base of the uppermost sheath, and the others fol- 
lowing in succession : the sheaths are smaller than in those 
stems which are fertile only, and larger than in the barren stems. 
I am indebted to Mr. Cameron, of the Birmingham Botanic Gar- 
den, for specimens in this state, gathered while the catkin was 
still in perfection. 
Eng. Bot. Sup. 2777. 
f Deutsclilaiuls Kryptogamische Gevvachse, 6, pi. 5. 
E 
