Note on Vegetative Reproduction in some 
Indian Selaginellas. 
BY 
N. BANCROFT, 
1851 Exhibition Research Scholar , Newnham College , Cambridge. 
With Plate XL IX and seven Figures in the Text. 
HE two species of Selaginella which form the subject of this note were 
1 - sent as herbarium specimens by Professor Kashyap, of the Lahore 
Government College, to Professor Seward, who has very kindly handed 
them to the writer for investigation. Professor Kashyap collected them in 
the neighbourhood of Rajpur and Mussoorie, India, in August and 
September, 1913, and they have been identified by Mr. C. H. Wright, of 
Kew, as Selaginella chrysocaulos , Spring, and S', chrysorrhizos , Spring. 1 
According to Hieronymus, 2 both species belong to the group of 
Selaginella suberosa , 3 a subdivision of the pleiomacrosporangiate and mono- 
stelic Heterophylleae. In his diagnosis of the group, Hieronymus notes 
that apparently vegetative reproduction is not normally present, and the 
representative species reproduce themselves only by spores ; Spring does 
not especially mention any methods of vegetative reproduction, though the 
presence of stolons at the base of the vegetative stems seems to be 
a characteristic of S', chrysocaulos . 4 
The chief interest of the two specimens under consideration lies in the 
fact that they show vegetative reproduction, this being normally unrepre- 
sented in the group to which they belong, although similar types of repro- 
duction regularly occur in other forms. 
The specimens of S. chrysocaulos are characterized by the possession 
of bud-like structures at the tips of some of the vegetative branches 
(PI. XLIX, Fig. 1, and Text-fig. 1). Professor Kashyap refers to them as 
‘surface tubers’, their function being propagative. Hieronymus 5 notes that 
in Selaginella Lyallii , X. Vogelii , and related species, a transformation of 
1 For the localities of these two species see Spring’s Monographic cle la famille des Lycopo- 
diacees, Pt. II. Mem. de l’Acad. Roy. de Belgique, t. xxiv, 1850, pp. 250, 251. 
2 Hieronymus, G. Selaginellaceae (in Engler and Prantl’s Pflanzenfamilien, I, 4, ii, p. 621, 1900), 
p. 626. 
3 Spring considers the two species as closely related to one another and to S. suberosa. 
4 Spring, 1 . c., p. 250. 5 Hieronymus, 1 . c., p. 666. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXVIII. No. C XII. October, 1914.] 
