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L E P R A R I A botryoides.
Common Green Lepraria.
CRYPTOGAMIA Algce.
Gen. Char. Seeds in a powdery substance, loosely
clothing a membranous or fibrous crust.
Spec. Char. Crustaceous, clustered, green,, somewhat
gelatinous, indeterminate, the granulations
bead-like.
Syn. Lepraria botryoides. Achar. Meth. 6.
Lichen botryoides. Achar. Prod. 10. Hoffm. Enum. 6.
t . l . f . 2 . JVith.v. 4 .3 . Relh. 445. Sibth. 3 16.
Byssus botryoides. Linn. Sp. PI. 1639. Huds. 609.
Hull. 308. Light/. 1006. FI. Dan. t. 899. f . 3.
B. botryoides saturate virens. Dill, in Raii Syn. 56.
Muse. 3. t. 1. f . 5.
T h e barks of trees, old posts and rails, garden-pots, &c.,
are green all the year round with this vegetable, which stains
the fingers on the slightest touch, and is in its greatest perfection
during the damp months of winter.
The colour is a beautiful bright unchangeable green, only
turning yellowish or brownish in decay. The substance an
indeterminate, powdery, somewhat gelatinous, crust, on a
Very slight membranous base. When the green globular particles
are for the most part rubbed or scraped away, the remainder,
cohering irregularly, in a bead-like manner, are
found attached to this membrane. This is all we can discern
qf its structure, and accords with Hoffmann’s representations.
That author, copying Lightfoot’s typographical error, calls
our plant Green Cluster Byssus, but this is one of the most
innocent mistakes that could happen to an implicit transcriber.
We wish the science were encumbered with no others.