z m f 300 ]
L I C H E N Burgeffii.
Crowned Lichen.
CRY P TOGAMI A Alg*.
Gen. Char. Male, fcattered warts.
Female, fmooth fliielcls or tubercles, in which the
feeds are imbedded.
Spec. Char. Leafy, fomewhat imbricated, curled.
Shields elevated, brown, flightly concave, with a
green, leafy, curled and finuated border.
Syn. Lichen Burgdfii. Linn. Syft. Veg. ed. 13. 807.
Lightf. Scot. 827. t. 26. Hudf. FI. An. 538.
With. Bot. Arr. V. 3. 189.
H i t h e r t o this curious Lichen has been found only in
Dumfriesfhire, Scotland, by the Rev. Dr. Burgefs, but our
fpecimens were gathered laft fummer on trunks of trees in
the wild and beautiful country about the Devil’s bridge, Car-
diganfhire, and at Hafod in that neighbourhood, by Dr. Smith.
It grows, by no means copioufly, in patches about as broad as
the hand, the fronds being lobed, finuated, curled and cluttered
together, fo as to elevate one another into a thick cuthion-like
tu f t; their fubftance is thin and pellucid, of a dull green,
fmooth above, finely downy beneath, when dry becoming of a
purplith brown, and the under fide whitith or hoary. The
fhields arife from the dilk of the frond, in tolerable plenty
when they are at all to be found, and the frond protruding
with them makes them feem pedunculated, though they are
really feflile ; their dilk. is flightly concave, fmooth, red brown,
with a narrow, fcarcely perceptible, border of its own fubftance
and colour, and the whole enclofed in a luxuriant curled leafy
elevated margin of the colour and texture of the frond.
Mr. Lightfoot defcribes the fhields as, when wet, of the
fame colour with the leaves ; whereas they are of a rather
brighter brown in that ftate than when dry. Indeed his whole
defcription is not made with all that attention which fo n e w
and Angular an object deferved.