2738
C H A R A aspera.
Bristly Chara.
CRYPTOGAMIA Characece.
Gen. Char. Stem spirally striated, articulated, bearing
whorled branches. Fructification of two
kinds; spirally striated nucules, and coloured
globules.—Greville.
Spec. Char. Stem very slender, with scattered,
spreading, or deflexed bristles. Ramuli 6—8,
ascending, slightly spreading, acute, jointed.
Bracteas 4—5 in whorls.
Syn. C. aspera. Willd. Act. Nat. Bot. v. 3. 298.
Wallr. Ann. Bot. 185. t. 6. f . 3. Greville Crypt.
FI. v. 6. t. 339.
Equisetum s. Hippuris muscosa sub aqua repens.
Plukn. Phytogr. t. 193. ƒ 6. ? Almag. Bot.
135.?
O u r specimens were gathered in Anglesey, in August
1831.
Stems slightly branched, erect, and densely crowded,
1—2 feet long, very flexible, with a degree of tenacity while
recent; but when dry rather brittle; copiously beset with
scattered, acute, slender, straight bristles, which are either
spreading, or a little deflexed, and at the base of each whorl
is found a row of appressed bristles, connected in pairs,
each pair pointing upwards and downwards, and resembling
stipules in their mode of insertion, two or three pairs of
bristles being connected with each ramulus. Ramuli, in
some cases, spreading, usually almost erect and incurved
towards the base, with 6 joints, each joint surrounded by a
whorl of 5 bracteas of the same shape and texture as the
cauline bristles, the two innermost longer than the rest, all
of them slightly spreading. Globules large, bright red,
spherical, solitary, sessile, attached at the joints of the
ramuli, exactly between the 2 longer bracteae, and separating,
at length, into 8 triangular portions, each portion