A handbook of cryptogamic botany / by Alfred W. Bennett and George Murray.

  • Alfred William Bennett
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of cryptogamic botany / by Alfred W. Bennett and George Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    102/492 (page 90)
    t and the Marattiacece. The young leaves (in Osmunda cinnamomea, L., and Todea superba, Col.) present the remarkable peculiarity of their apex being occupied by a well-marked triangular-conical apical cell. The family includes only a very small number of species, comprised in the two genera Osmunda (L.) and Todea (Willd.). Osmunda regalis (L.), growing in bogs, with remarkably coriaceous leaves, is our ‘royal fern ’ or ‘ flowering fern.’ Literature. Bower—Broc. Roy. Soc., xxxvii., 18S4, p. 42; and Quart. Journ. Micr. Sc., 1885, p. 75. Gardiner and Ito—Annals of Botany, vol. i., 1887, p. 27. Order 6.—Schizaacea:. The ovoid or pear-shaped sessile spo- ranges are not strictly epidermal in their origin. The apex of the sporange is occu- pied by a cap-like zone of cells of peculiar form, and the dehiscence is vertical. In the genera Aneimia (Sw.) and Schiztea (Sm.) the fertile leaves have the paniculate appearance of an Osmunda. In Schiztea and Lygodium (Sw.) the sporanges are seated in two rows on the under side of very narrow pinnae ; and in Lygodium each sporange is enclosed in a pocket-shaped indusium. In Aneimia the two lowermost pinnae form a long-stalked panicle, from which the meso- phyll has disappeared. In Aneimia and Lygodium the sporanges spring originally from the margin of the leaf, but are eventu- ally placed in the course of development on its under side. In Mohria (Sw.) they are placed on the back of the leaf, and are con- Fig. 69.—Lygodiumpaimatum Sw. cealed by its recurved margin. The differ- entiation of tissues, both in the mesophyll of the leaf and in the ‘ vascular ’ bundles, is very slight. 1 he stem is in general but feebly developed, and seldom branches , the leaf-stalk is penetrated by only a single ‘ vascular bundle. T. he peculiai position of the stomates in some species of Aneimia has already been described.