bl [ 1865 ]
L I C H E N * microcephalus.
Minute Pin-headed Lichen.
CRYPT0GAM1A Algce.
G e n . C h a r . Male, scattered warts.
Female, smooth shields or tubercles, in which the
seeds are imbedded.
S p e c . C h a r . Crust olive-coloured, rugged. Tubercles
minute, nearly globose, black and shining, on
shortish black stalks ; their disks flat and opaque.
DISCOVERED oft oak rails at Caister near Yarmouth, in
Dec. 1805, by Mr. W . Borrer, to whom we are indebted for
specimens.
The crust is of a very perceptible thickness, uninterrupted,
tartareous, olive-coloured, very rough and rugged, internally
whitish, and we think there can be no doubt of its belonging
to the tubercles, as we know no other species of Lichen which
it precisely resembles, and it has moreover a general affinity
to the crust of an Acharian Calicium, to which tribe the plant
before us unquestionably belongs. The chief doubt arises
from these tubercles being so-very like those of C. stigonelhim
of Acharius, coal-black and very shining, with a flat, depressed,
opaque disk •, and that species is asserted to have no
crust, its tubercles being found scattered over L. pertusus,
t, 677, in^a parasitical manner. They are moreover much
shorter stalked than in our plant, otherwise it might bb Suspected
we had now, for the first time, become acquainted with
the real crust of those tubercles,