THE 
NEW PHYTOliOGIST. 
Vol. 2., No. 6. 
June 24TH, 1903. 
ON ASEXUAL REPRODUCTION 
AND REGENERATION IN HEPATICAE, 
By F. Cavers, 
Yorkshire College , Leeds. 
(With Eight Figures in the Text). 
I T is well known that the Moss-gametophyte possesses in a 
marked degree the faculty of regeneration, and that almost 
every part of the plant may, under suitable conditions, give rise to 
protonemal filaments, from which new plants are developed. In 
many Mosses, the production of protonema is confined to more or 
less modified and specialised organs, which previously become 
detached from the parent plant. Correns has, in his valuable 
“ Untersuchungen,” 1 framed a somewhat elaborate classification of 
these organs of vegetative propagation. Although various writers 
have described examples of similar phenomena in the Hepaticae, 
none has yet collected and summarised the available information on 
the subject, in the same way that Correns has so ably done in the 
case of the Mosses. The object of the present paper is to present 
a resume of the principal results that have been published up to the 
present time, together with some new observations. 
In many Hepaticae, asexual propagation is brought about by the 
dying away of the older parts of the shoot from behind and the 
setting free of the younger parts or branches as independent plants. 
In other cases, the plant l>ears, often in very large numbers, 
small few-celled bodies (gemmae), which become free and produce 
new plants. A third method of propagation, not always easy to 
distinguish from those just mentioned, consists in the separation 
from the main axis of buds or branches, either normal or adventive 
in origin. It is sometimes difficult to draw a sharp distinction 
1 Correns, C., Untersuchungen fiber die Vermehrung der 
Uaubuioose durcli Brutorgane urnl Stecklinge. Jena, 1899. 
