LEMNA gibba.
Gibbous Duck-weed.
MONOECIA Diandria,
G en. Char. Male, Cal. o f one leaf. Cor. none. Female,
Cal. o f one leaf. Cor. none. Style 1. Caps.
with several seeds.
Spec. Char. Leaves sessile, a little convex above,
hemispherical beneath. Ropts solitary.
Syn. Lemna gibba. Linn. Sp. PL 1377. Sm. FI.
Brit. 957. With. 44. Hull. 202. Relh. 346.
Siblh. 15. Abbot. 199.
L. minor (3. Huds. 399.
Lenticula palustris major, inferne magis convexa,
fructu polyspermo. Mich. Gen. 15. t. 1 1 . ƒ . 1.
M r . BORRER, to whom we are obliged for Lenina minor,
t. 1095, gathered the flowering specimens here delineated of
L . gibba, the end of last. June, at Lewes in Sussex, the only
place in which he has observed the fructification *. We do not
know that it has been seen any where in Britain before. The
plant itself is indeed among the rarer species of Lemna.
This differs from the minor in being larger, remarkably tumid
and succulent, of an extremely vascular texture. Its
upper surface is convex, often of a purplish hue; the lower
paler, and almost hemispherical. Roots generally solitary,
sometimes in pairs. Flowers solitary, from the margin of the
leaf. Micheli observed a concave calyx,. which he says soon
disappears, leaving the stamina and pistillum naked, in which
state iare our specimens. Probably what we have figured in
L . minor is only the calyx in its early or more evident State,
and not a corolla.
With respect to the place of these plants in the Linnsean
system, they seem most properly to belong to Diandria Mo-
nogynia.
* Ehrhart observed it at Hanover, July IS, 1779.