On the Simplest Form of Moss, 
BY 
KARL GOEBEL, 
Professor of Botany in the University of Munich. 
With Plate XXII. 
As the result of previous researches, I had come to the 
conclusion that the peculiarities which mark the earlier stages 
in the development of the Moss-plant are of great importance 
as indicating homologies between the Mosses and other groups 
of plants. The germinating spore, namely, does not directly 
give rise to a Moss-plant, but to a protonema which, on its 
first discovery, was thought to be a filamentous Alga ; and 
even in those forms ( Sphagnum , Andreaea) in which the 
protonema is not filamentous, it has been shown to be 
produced by the modification of a filament, a conclusion which 
is also applicable to the development of the protonema in the 
Liverworts 1 , where it exhibits much more marked adaptation 
to various external conditions than is the case in the Mosses. 
In some remarkable forms of Liverworts the plant bearing the 
sexual organs is only an appendage of the protonema. Thus, 
in certain forms of Metzgeriopsis 2 (which are closely allied to 
Lejeunea ), the leafy shoot does not, as is generally the case, 
1 Goebel, Ueb. die Jugendformen der Pflanzen, Flora, 1889. 
3 Goebel, Morphol. und Biol. Studien, Ann. du Jard. Bot. de Buitenzorg, VII. 
1887. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. VI. No. XXIV, December, 1892.] 
