£ 0% [ 1S33 ]
LICHEN oculatus,
Eye-like Coralline Lichen.
CRYPTOGAMIA Algor.
G e n . Ch a r . Male, scattered warts.
Female, smooth shields or tubercles, in which the
seeds are imbedded.
S pec. Char. Crust indeterminate, continued, white,
rugged, warty, bearing upright,, clustered, cylindrical,
tumid, solid branches. Shields terminal,
solitary, flattish, grey.
Syn. Lichen oculatus. Dicks. Crypt, fasc. 2 . 17. t- 6,
f , 3 , IVith. v. 4. 7. Hull. 285.
L. horophthalmus. Ach. Prod. 9Q,
Isidium oculatum. Ach. Meth. 140.
OBSERVED first by Mr. Dickson on rocks in Scotland,
Our specimens were gathered on Ben Lawers by Mr. Turner
and Mr. W. J. Hooker. Acharius seems in doubt respecting
this species, and yet it can scarcely have been unseen by him,
as we have a fine Lapland specimen from Dr. Swartz connected
with his original L.frigidus, Can this therefore be
the Isidium dactylinurn ? That it is an Isidium there can be
no doubt; but it shows how truly that genus has the fructification
of a Lichen.
The crust is very white; smooth and shining in its surface;
spongy or fungous within. It runs uninterruptedly over
mosses or such small plants, producing numerous swellings
and warts, but especially a number of crowded upright cylindrical
uneven branches, mostly, but not invariably, simple,
fungous within, brittle like a coralline wheii dry. At the
end of each perfect, branch is one small solitary horizontal
shield, of a much less diameter than the branch, and as it
were immersed in its summit, so as to have a border from the
branch itself. The disk when young is grey, but at length it
seems to become white and rugged, perhaps in consequence
of the discharge of the seeds, which are plainly lodged in cells
within it when full grown, *
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