*f*> [ 2499 ]
JUNGERMANNIA complanata.
Flat Jungermannia.
C R Y P T 0G AM 1A Hepaticce.
Gen. Char. Male flowers sessile. Anthers stalked.
Capsule on a stalk, rising from a sheath, of 4 valves.
Seeds attached to elastic filaments.
Spec. Char. Much branched, procumbent, depressed.
Leaves two-ranked, rounded, e n tire ; th e ir side-
lobes of th e same shape, not half so large. Sheaths
terminal, compressed, abrupt, entire.
Syn. Ju n g e rm an n ia complanata. Linn. Sp. PI. 15,99.
Huds. 514. With. 878. Hull. 280. Lightf. 780.
Relh. 439. Sibth. 311. Abbot. 253. Curt. Lond.
fasc. 4. t. 6’8. Ehrh. Crypt. 97-
Lichenastrum imbricatum majus,squamis compressis
e t planis. Dill. Muse. 496. t. 72. f . 2 6 .
L. imbricatum majus. Raii Syn. ed. 3. I l l ; excluding
th e synonym of Bobart.
A b u n d a n t on the trunks of trees, in woods and thickets,
every where, bearing capsules plentifully in April and May.
This species composes broad dense patches, or cushions, of a
light grass-green hue, entangled with mosses, and other plants of
the same kind, their forms and colours being often elegantly and
richly contrasted. Its shoots are repeatedly branched, the
branches spreading, but all flat and depressed, like the foliage,
which consists of two opposite rows of imbricated, almost orbicular,
entire, slightly convex leaves, each furnished underneath with
a close-pressed side-lobe, of their own form, but scarcely half so
big. Some few leaves are bordered with granular buds. The
copious sheaths grow solitarily at the ends of the branches, being
about thrice as long as the leaves, somewhat bell-shaped, compressed
upward, the margin abrupt, inflexed ana entire. Fruit-
stalk usually twice the length of the sheath.