Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/358

 330 THE MOSSES OF THK UPPER DOVEY. This is a stemless plant, which can be propagated by offshoots from the base. The leaves are dark green above, ornamented when young with white markings ; beneath they are of a rich purple. The petioles are covered with a short brown pubescence. From the axil of a leaf appears a stem bearing a large purplish spathe, which soon opens, disclosing the inflorescence. The flowers are unisexual, the females borne at the base on a short branched cyme remain in close proximity to the persistent spathe. The males are arranged in a short branched panicle at some distance above the females ; they are very much more numerous and smaller. The flowers open singly on each branch of the panicle, and are rather fugacious, as is usual in the Order. The sepals are rosy, the petals much narrower and white. The stamens bear tufts of yellow hairs on the filaments; they seem to be very similar in both sexes, but the females appear to produce no pollen. In the male flowers the pistil is quite absent ; I could find no rudiment of it. Though I fertilized several flowers, they did not set fruit, but on one occasion the ovary so far developed as to assume the form of an angled oblong capsule. The affinity of the plant is with the monotypic Streptolirion, a native of India, from which it is distinguished at once by habit, that plant being a climber, and having the flowers always bisexual and similar. Description of Plate 360. — Fig. 1. Whole plant (half nat. size). 2. Panicle (nat. size). 3. Male flower. 4,5. Female flowers. 6. Stamenof female flower. 7. Stamen of male flower. 8. Sterile anther of female flower (front view). 9. Hairs of sterile stamen. 10. Ovary. Figs. 3-10 variously enlarged. THE MOSSES OF THE UPPER DOVEY. By May Eoberts. The following is a list of the Mosses gathered in the watershed of the Upper Dovey, in the county of Merioneth. The region examined is bounded below by the confluence of the Cowarch stream at Aber Cowarch, a village about a mile north of Dinas Mawddwy, and 319 ft. above sea-level. It ranges upwards to the high lands which rise steeply on either side to an altitude of 1500 to 2000 ft., and culminates in the summit of Aran Mawddwy, at an elevation of 2970 ft. The chief gathering grounds were the bogs on the moors, and the "nants" which descend from these to the main valley. The central mass and summit of Aran Mawddwy consists of porphyry and volcanic ash, and the Dovey has its source in a small lake at the foot of the sheer precipice which forms the eastern face of the mountain ; with this exception, the geological formation of the district belongs entirely to the Bala Beds, which here consist of shales and flags. The region is traversed obliquely in a north- easterly direction by a thin band of Bala limestone. The Mosses were gathered at Easter and Whitsuntide, and in the months of August and September.