S. R. Kashyap. 
235 
THE ANDROECIUM IN 
PL AG IOC H ASM A APPENDICULATUM L. ET L. 
AND P. ARTICULATUM KASHYAP. 
By S. R. Kashyap, M.Sc. (Punjab), B.A. (Cantab). 
Professor of Botany, Government College, Lahore. 
[With Two Figures in the Text.] 
HE genus Plagiochasina was worked out, both as regards its 
structure and development, by Leitgeb who gave a detailed 
account of it in his classical treatise, “ Untersuchungen iiber die 
Lebermoose,” Vol. VI, 1881. Plagiochasina appendiculatum was 
one of the five species which he examined. He gave a fairly full 
account of the structure of the thallus and the female receptacle 
in the genus but only a single paragraph is devoted to the male re¬ 
ceptacle, and although he gives many figures of the female receptacle 
at various stages of development, the male receptacle is not 
figured even once. More recently, Evans, in the Bulletin of the 
Torreya Botanical Club (Vol. XLII, 1915), has given a compre¬ 
hensive account of the genus with very full descriptions of the 
American species. He refers to Leitgeb’s and the present writer’s 
work, and says : “ The androecia vary in outline from circular to 
more or less crescentic or cordate, with the convex side turned 
towards the base of the thallus. These crescentic androecia, as 
Leitgeb notes, should not be confused with the dichotomous 
androecia occasionally found in Lnnularia, where two growing 
points are involved. They represent, according to his ideas, a 
persistence of the two-lobed condition at the apex of the ordinary 
thallus, where the single growing point lies in the indentation 
between the lobes. Kashyap, however, says that in both P. 
appendiculatum and P. articulatum the androecium has usually 
two growing points, and implies that the horse-shoe shape is 
therefore due to a forking. Unfortunately, he adduces no con¬ 
clusive evidence to support his position.” According to the present 
writer’s experience it is so easy to satisfy oneself regarding the two 
growing points in the androecium in spirit material that the failure 
of two such accurate observers as Leitgeb and Evans to notice 
them can only be due to unsatisfactory herbarium material. As 
the importance of this point lies even far beyond the genus 
Plagiochasina itself, it was decided to clear it up by examining 
a large number of spirit specimens collected by the writer in 
various parts of the western Himalayas, chiefly Mussoorie, 
