2602. (Fig. 1.)
V E R R U C A R I A pulchella.
Little Filmy-leaved Verrucaria.
CRYPTOGAMIA Lichenes.
Gen. Char. Tubercles of a different substance from
the thallus, simple, convex, not expanding, but
furnished with a central pore, and inclosing a
somewhat gelatinous nucleus.
Spec. Char. Scales leaf-like, very thin, membranous,
smooth, greenish-grey, roundish, with an elevated
incurved edge; at length crowded, waved, cut
into rounded lobes, and sprinkled with powdery
granules; underside pale brown, with woolly
fibres. Tubercles nearly globular, black, immersed
; the apex only at length exposed.
M iss Hutchins only appears to have gathered this species
with tubercles. She found it on a mountain near Bantry,
growing on Lichen plumbeus on stems of heath. The plant
itself is of frequent occurrence on mossy trees in Sussex,
but seems to have escaped notice elsewhere. It usually
grows on Jungermannia dilatata, and forms wide but interrupted
patches.
Individual plants are seldom two lines in diameter.
When young, the thin, almost filmy, concave, rounded leaf
has, under a glass, the appearance of a scutella, with a peculiarly
neat hem-like rim, and a disk either even or marked
with a few wrinkles concentric with the rim. In this state
the plants are often scattered separate over the moss ; but
they soon, in general, become crowded, variously waved and
curled, and broken at the edges into lobes of various sizes,
which form tolerably regular segments of independent circles.
As the growth advances, powdery granulations burst
forth, and by degrees obliterate the edges and spread over
the disk of the leaf. The colour of the living plant is a sil