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CRYPTOGAMIA Hepaticce.
G e n . C h a r . Male flowers sessile.
Capsule on a stalk rising from a sheath, of 4 valves.
Seeds attached to elastic filaments.
S p e c . C h a r . Stems branched, creeping. Leaves in
two rows, curved to one side, oblong, cloven
half-way down, sharp-pointed. Sheaths terminal,
cylindrical, elongated, with many sharp
teeth.
Syn. Jungermanniabicuspidata. Linn. Sp. PI. 1598.
Huds. 511. With. 873. Hull. 278. Relh. 438.
Sibth. 3 10. Abbot. 252; excluding their citations
of Engl. Bot. t. 281.
Lichenastrum trichomanis facie, foliolis bifidis, minimum.
Ran St/n. 113.
L. pinnulis acutissime bifidis, minimum. Dill.
Muse. 488. t. 70. ƒ. 13.
M r . HOOKER, whose authority is so great in this genus,
and for whose illustration of it we have long waited, in order
to write with more accuracy that part of the FI. Brit., assures
us our t. 281 is a mere variety of J. bidentata, t. 606. However
that may. be, the present is certainly the true bicuspidata,
a plant not uncommon in moist shady places, easily discerned
by its long, cylindrical, somewhat curved sheaths, produced
abundantly in the early spring.
The stems are creeping, more or less branched, clothed with
two rows of small, sessile, squarish, or somewhat oblong leaves,
curved upward from the ground, and each divided about halfway
down, into two nearly-equal, very sharp, spreading lobes.
The fructification appears to be always terminal. The sheaths
are curiously reticulated, their orifice with many sharp teeth,
convoluted when dry. Capsule brown, on a stalk twice or
thrice as long as the sheath. The colour of the whole plant,
except the capsule, is nearly white, with a tawny tinge here
and there.
Ehrhart s bicuspidata, Crypt. 292, is different from this,
and very like our t. 281.