Cryptogams or Flowerless Plants. 
143 
Natural, Order 
M U S C I. Tab. 106. 
Diagnosis.- —Low herbs with filiform or slender wiry stems and minute 
alternate usually spirally arranged imbricating leaves, destitute of vascular 
tissue. Fructification consisting of a stalked sporange usually with a central 
axis, containing microscopic double-coated spores, of one kind, capable on 
germination of developing a thread-like branching filament upon which leafy 
shoots give origin to new plants, which bear the reproductive organs when 
fully developed. 
Distribution.— A large Order, represented wherever there is sufficient humidity from the Equator 
almost to the limits of vegetation, often clothing rocks, the trunks of trees and old masonry. A few 
species are submerged aquatics. 
Stem very slender, composed solely of cellular tissue, the cells of the axis often much elongated, terminating 
in the fructification, or, if bearing axillary fructification, elongating indefinitely. 
LEAVES minute, ovate lanceolate or subulate, usually consisting of a single stratum of cells the form of which 
affords specific characters to Museologists : the cells all alike containing green colour-granules (chlorophyll), or of 
2 kinds, the colour-cells smaller with larger colourless intermediate cells marked by delicate transverse fibres and 
often perforate in the genus Bogmoss (Sphagnum). 
SPORANGES borne upon a slender stalk (seta) or subsessile, either terminal (as in Acrocarpous Mosses) or 
axillary (as in Pleurocarpous Mosses); i-celled with a central vertical axis ( columella ), the space between the 
columella and the sides being occupied by the minute spores : sporange covered by a cap ( calyptra ); the mouth 
