r 2 5 7 ]
L I C H E N plicatus.
Stringy Lichen.
&(o
C R T P TOG A M I A Alge.
Gen. Char. Male, fcattered warts.
Female, fmooth Ihields or tubercles, in which the
feeds are imbedded.
Spec. Char. Filamentous, pendulous; the branches
entangled. Shields radiated.
Sy n . Lichen plicatus. Linn. Sp. PI, 1622. Hudf.
FI. An. 560. With. But. Arr. V. 3. 222. Relh.
Cant. 441. Lightf. Scot. 889.
Mufcus arboreus, Ufnea Offic. Raii Syn. 64.
Ufnea vulgaris, loris longis implexis. Dill. Mufc. 56«
/. n , / . 1 .
JK.ARELY found hanging from the branches of old trees in
dark fhady woods, in Scotland as well as England. Dr. Pul-
teney communicated it from Dorfetfhire.
The whole plant is from one to two feet, or even more, in
length, forming a thick entangled mafs of branching fibres,
which are cylindrical, all more or lefs divaricated and undulated,
none of them ftraight. They are of an uniform green-
Ifh free-ftone colour; the furface very fmooth at firft, but in
the older parts rough with minute warts, fuppofed to be the
male flowers. The main Items often crack here and there, discovering
in the interftices a very tough white central fibre
which [pervades the whole plant. The fhields are now and
then to be found about the divarications of the principal
branches, and nearly of the fame colour; their margins radiated
with rigid pointed fibres.
This mofs, formerly ufed as a ftyptic, has long fince given
way to more active medicines.