LICHEN sparassus.
Tom-coated Cup Lichen.
CRYPTOGAMIA Alga.
Gen. Char. Male, scattered warts.
Female, smooth shields or tubercles, in which the
seeds are imbedded.
Spec. Char. Fronds cartilaginous, minute, lobed
and cut. Stems cylindrical, repeatedly branched,
rigid, ash-coloured, rough with innumerable
scaly leaflets. Cups minute, toothed, pervious,
repeatedly proliferous from their margins. Tubercles
clustered, brown.
Syn. Baeomyces sparassus. Ach. JVLeth. 346.
G a t h e r e d in mossy woods at Hafod, Cardiganshire, in
1797. It is perhaps not uncommon in such places. Our specimens
agree with some from Acharius.
The original foliage is minute and evanescent, lobed and
cut, green above, white beneath, but the whole surface of the
stems is nearly clothed with similar leaflets, having a scurfy
or scaly appearance, and where naked seeming as if it had
been plucked bare. The stems form large tufts, adhering to
each other and to the surrounding moss or grass, so as to break
when gathered, especially if tender from wet. They are about
two inches high, tubular, thin, erect, repeatedly branched,
rigid though brittle, cracked or perforated above the origin of
every branch, and ending in very small, compound, irregular,
toothed or forked cups, whose centre is also pervious. Innumerable
little brown crowded tubercles terminate the points or
teeth of the cups.—Acharius considers the L . ventricosus of
Hudson, and of his own Prodromus, p. 189, Dill. t. 15. f. 17,
as a variety of this. Indeed there seems to be but a shade of
difference between them.