INTERRUPTED CLUB-MOSS. 
363 
in several localities ; and has been found, though less abun- 
dantly, in the United States. 
The Interrupted Club-Moss appears to have been well known 
to our earliest botanists, although nothing remarkable has been 
recorded of its history. The best figure is that in Dillenius ; ^ 
that in the posthumous volume of Morison edited by Bobartf is 
also good ; Plukenet’sJ figure is much too small to give a satis- 
factory idea of the plant ; and that in Sowerby’s ‘ English Bo- 
tany ’§ has the fructification too much like the cone of a cedar. 
The roots are tough, wiry and tortuous, apparently not long, 
but very firmly fixed in the ground. The stem is creeping, very 
strong and tough, and has the surface deeply and irregularly 
striated : it sends out, at intervals varying from one to four 
inches, long branches in an erect position ; these increase an- 
nually in length, the growth of each year being very decidedly 
marked by the altered length and direction of the leaves ; so 
much so indeed as to give the branches a somewhat jointed 
appearance. From the marking of each year’s growth the name 
of annotinum has probably been given to this Lycopodium ; a 
name, however, not exactly appropriate, because the word rather 
implies of one year’s age, leading us to imagine the plant was 
^ annual. These upright branches are either single or again di- 
vided ; and when fertile, which is by no means invariably the 
case, the spike is usually on the sixth or seventh joint of the 
branch. After having fruited, or arrived at equivalent age, the 
erect branches become prone, throw out roots and emit erect 
branches as before. Connected with this subject Sir J. E. 
Smith has broached an interesting hypothesis, which I will give 
in his own words. “ The flowering branches are erect, densely 
leafy, but little subdivided, each terminating in a solitary upright 
spike, whose scales, being deciduous, seem to leave the branch 
partly naked, but it afterwards bears proper leaves, except a few 
diminished ones just under where the spike had been, and pro- 
duces, in the following season, another spike : hence the jointed 
* Hist. Muse. 455, t. 63, fig. 9. 
f Morison (Bobart) Hist. Plant, iii. 264, sec. 15, t. v. fig. 3. 
I Pluk. Phyt. t. 205, fig. 5. § Eng. Bot. 1727, 
