S. L. Ghose. 
35 
CAMPYLONEMA LAHORENSE , 
A NEW MEMBER OF SCYTONEMACE^E. 
By S. L. Ghose, M. Sc. 
Assistant Professor of Botany, Government College , Lahore, India. 
[With Six Figures in the Text.] 
I N Lahore in the month of August during the rains, a very 
beautiful blue-green alga makes its appearance on lawns and 
waste grounds where water stands for a day or two and then slowly 
dries up. In damp places thus left after the evaporation of water, 
small, shiny, bluish-green, circular patches are seen amongst tufts 
of grass. These slowly extend on all sides and become irregular 
in outline till finally they run into one another and produce a very 
wide, woolly, bright bluish-green stratum on the surface of the 
damp soil. As the soil dries the stratum takes on a brownish tinge 
till finally when it is quite dry it becomes dark-brown. A healthily 
growing vegetative stratum is partly embedded in the mud and is 
partly above it (Fig. 1). In the subterranean part the filaments 
Surface 
Fig. 1. A small portion of the thallus, showing the filaments in its 
embedded and aerial portions, sh sheath, het heterocyst X -|S6. 
are straight, of lighter colour, run more or less parallel to one 
another and have no distinct sheaths. Those near the surface of 
the soil are generally curved in the middle and have the two ends 
abruptly ascending into vertical aerial arms. Each of these 
exposed arms is enclosed in a sheath, which is thin and hyaline at 
first, but which later on becomes thick and lamellose, and brown 
or yellowish-brown in colour (Fig. 2). As the soil dries the sheaths 
extend towards the middle of the filament and might finally meet 
so as to enclose the whole of it. 
