LYCOPODIUM. 
221 
Lycopodium clavatum, Linnaeus, 
Common Club-moss. (Plate XX. fig. 6.) 
This Club-moss is of procumbent habit, having vigorous 
creeping stems often many feet in length, much branched, 
and attached to the soil here and there by means of tough 
pale-coloured wiry-looking roots. The young branches, 
which are very thickly clothed with leaves, grow rather 
upwards at first, but soon all become prostrate, and cross 
and interlace, forming a close-matted tuft, whence comes, 
in fact, the name it bears in Sweden— Matte-grass , or 
mat-grass. The stems are densely clothed with small, 
narrow, lanceolate, flattish leaves, which remain fresh 
through the winter; they are smooth on the margin, or 
very slightly toothed, and terminate in a long white fila¬ 
mentous point, which gives the branches a somewhat 
hoary appearance. The upright stalks supporting the 
spikes are bare of leaves, but have at intervals whorls of 
smaller bodies closely pressed to the stalk, and tipped with 
shorter hut broader membranous chaffy processes; they 
are also of a pale yellowish-green colour. 
The spikes of fructification are usually over an inch in 
length, and are supported by a stalk of about twice their 
