On cephalozia (a genus of hepaticae) : its subgenera and some allied genera / by Richard Spruce.

  • Richard Spruce
Date:
1882
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On cephalozia (a genus of hepaticae) : its subgenera and some allied genera / by Richard Spruce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bined. Thus he unites to Cephalozia the Jungermania capitata of Hooker, on account of its rather large involucre, whereas it really belongs, by all its characters, to his own § Lophozia of Jungermania; but he excludes a very characteristic Cephalozia, C. connivens (Dicks), solely because of the ciliated mouth of the perianth, and relegates it to his genus Blepharos- toma, whose character is “ Perichaetium polyphyllum undique imbri- catum, phyllis articulate ciliatis. Plantae exstipulatae foliis transversis vel verticalibus.” It hardly needs pointing out that G. connivens, having neither transverse leaves nor ciliated bracts, could not, on Dumortier’s own shewing, be a Blepharostoma. He enumerates but 3 species of this genus; Bl. trichophyUum, Bl. connivens, and Bl. setacea. If the first be considered the type of Blep>harostoma, the second is a Cephalozia, and the third a Lepidozia; that is, they belong to three distinct genera—all of Dumortier’s own proposing ! Dumortier’s generic character does not exactly correspond to any single species of Cephalozia, yet he indicates by its name a peculiarity which, although found also in some other Hepaticee, is normally never absent from any species of Cephalozia, namely the capitate or comate female flowers. The bracts are usually much larger than the stem- leaves, and are closely set in 3 or 4 transverse rows, and along 3 sides of the stem or branch—i.e. they are tristichous; for, although in a great majority of the species underleaves are wanting to the stem, they are never absent from the flower heads, and (at least in the innermost row) they mostly equal the side leaves in size and form, being often connate with them into an outer cup, or perianth. Moreover, although in certain species the stem leaves may be round and entire—in a few others reduced to mere papillseform projections, or scales, and in one species entirely absent—in place of the bilobed leaves that prevail in the great majority of Cep)halozia—the bracts of both male and female flowers are, as a rule, in every species, deeply cloven, mostly bifid—in a few species occasion- ally 3—5 fid. Within the involucre, quite free from it, and usually protruding a long way beyond it, is a narrow trigono-prismatic perianth ; only in certain species of the subgenus Cephaloziella does it acquire supple- mentary angles and become 4—5—or 6-angled. This three-sided pe- rianth differs essentially from that of Lophocolea in the origin of its angles, or keels. In Lophocolea the angles are at the marginal sutures
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