The young Sporophytes of Lycopodium complanatum 
and Lycopodium clavatum. 
BY 
GRACE WIGGLESWORTH, M.Sc. 
University of Manchester. 
With Plate XXII and four Diagrams in the Text. 
HE Lycopodiaceae occupy a somewhat isolated position among the 
JL plants of the present day, especially as regards their anatomy, and 
compared with other groups of vascular Cryptogams they have received 
much less attention. Their relationship to other groups is a problem still 
unsolved, although the careful investigation of Palaeozoic plants has con- 
siderably extended our knowledge of the Lycopodiales in general. The 
present paper deals only with the anatomy of the young sporophyte of 
Lycopodium. How far we can rely on the evidence afforded by the early 
stages in the development of the young plant, as recapitulating the history 
of the group to which it belongs, is a debatable question, but that ancestral 
characters are shown in some cases during the early stages of life seems 
probable, and this fact alone makes the study of young forms a highly 
interesting one. 
A brief summary of the literature dealing with the morphology and 
anatomy of the stem of Lycopodium is given by Mr. C. E. Jones 1 in 
a paper read before the Linnean Society in April, 1904, in which he refers 
to the contributions on this subject made by Nageli, Hegelmaier, Cramer, 
Sachs, Russow, Strasburger, David and Weber, Pritzel, Linsbauer, and 
Boodle. Mr. Jones deals chiefly with a comparison of the mature stems 
of different species of Lycopodiitm . He considers that the development 
of anatomical structure has proceeded along two lines. L. clavatum may 
be taken as a type of the group in which a series of alternating bands of 
xylem and phloem is developed. This form of vascular structure i$ 
characteristic of those Lycopods which have creeping stems. In the other 
forms, of which L. squarrosum may be taken as a type, the phloem is 
scattered through the mass of xylem in more or less isolated patches. This 
structure is characteristic of tropical epiphytes. 
1 Jones, The Morphology and Anatomy of the stem of the Genus Lycopodium. Trans, of the 
Linnean Soc., March, 1905. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXI. No. LXXXII. April, 1907.] 
