Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 34 (1896).djvu/494

 460 CAPE ALG^. sent to Prof. Schmitz by Dr. Becker from the Kowie. It is the tetrasporic form of the Port Alfred plant. Prof. Schmitz had queried it as a variety of G. pistillata. This form has not yet been recorded south of the equator, and on geographical grounds some phycologists might prefer to regard this as a new species or variety ; but I do not see sufficient reason to do this. Phyllophora dive7'sifolia Suhr. Major Eeinbold kindly sent me a plant under this name from Herb. Lehmann, marked "secundum Herb. Drege." It is a fragment of Clmtangium ornatum. J. Ag., and as the description by Suhr of P. diversifolia in Flora, 1840, 262, answers to this plant, I suspect that Phyllophora diversifolia Suhr is a synonym for (jhcBtangium ornatum J. Ag. Spyridia glomerulifera Bracebridge Wilson MS. = Thamno- CARPUs ? GLOMULiFERUs J. Ag. Capo Morgan, Flanagan ! Myriophylla Beckeriana Holmes. Kowie, Becker ! Desmia Lyngb. Prof. Schmitz (Syst. Uebers. d. bisher bek. Gatt. d. Flor., Flora, 1889, 454, and Engl. Bot. Jahrb. Bd. xxi. 1895, 168) drops the name of Desmia and adopts Chondrococcus, and gives in the latter reference as his reason that Desmia Lyngb. was a genus of brown algae which included by chance one species of Floridea, viz. D. Hornemanni Lyngb. The genus Desmia was insufficiently described by Lyngbye, when he founded it in 1819, in his Tentamen Hydroph. Dan. 33 ; and Prof. J. G. Agardh, in his Spec. Alg. ii. pt. 2, 639, emends the characters of the genus, but calls it Desmia J. Ag. MS. This was pubHshed in 1852, but in 1847 Kiitzing had described his genus Chondrococcus {Bot. Zeit. 1847, 23), which included Sphcerococciis Lambertii of Suhr (= D. Hornemanni). Prof. Schmitz therefore gives priority to Kiitzing's name as opposed to Desmia of J. G. Agardh. Chondrococcus Hornemanni Schmitz (= Desmia Hornemanni Lyngb., Spharococciis Lambertii Suhr, Chondrococcus Lambertii Kiitz., non Fucus Lambertii Turn.). Grunow (Voyage of Novara, Bot. Theil. i. 84) doubts whether this species is identical with Sphcerococcus Lam- bertii Kiitz., and later Schmitz (in Engl. Bot. Jahrb. Bd. xxi. 1895, 171) considers them to be distinctly different species. I have examined the plants collected by Drege and Ecklon at the Cape under the name of S. Lambertii and S. Lambertii var. gelatinosa Suhr, which Major Eeinbold has been so kind as to lend me. These plants are described in Flora, 1835, 728. Grunow, who has not seen Suhr's variety, queries it as identical with Desmia Horne- manni; I have not seen an authentic specimen of the latter, but Suhr's variety agrees entirely with Lyngbye's figure and descrip- tion, so far as it goes, of D. Hornemanni. Prof. J. G. Agardh, however, has seen authentic specimens of both D. Hornemanni and S. Lambertii, and finds them identical {Spec. Alg. ii. 642). In the British Museum there are forms of this plant ranging from the very narrow thallus corresponding with Lyngbye's plate of D. Horne- manni through all grades up to a large form of S. Lambertii. A careful examination of these plants leads to the inevitable conclusion that no form is worthy even of being ranked as a variety, for no one