Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club/Volume 10/On the Fruit of Eustichium Norvegicum

by Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton

On the Fruit of Eustichium Norvegicum, Br. Eu.
Elizabeth G. Knight

The rare moss, Eustichium Norvegicum, has long been known to bryologists, but, up to the present time, no description of its fruit has been published.   It has been my good fortune to find the plant in fructification, and a description of the fruit, illustrated by figures showing the details of its structure, is here appended.

The moss was found in great abundance on the Potsdam sandstone in the dells of the Wisconsin River, near Kilbourn City, Wis., on July 8th of the present year, and, after careful search, seventeen fertile specimens were obtained. It grew on moist, vertical faces of rock forming large patches.

Description of the Fruit.--Capsule terminal, pendent, pyriform, 1^mm. long and about half as broad when moist, noticeable by its yellow color, supported on a curved pedicel which slightly exceeds the length of the capsule; teeth none in the specimens collected, their place being occupied by a thin, transparent membrane; columella a straight rod persistently attached to the operculum; operculum long-rostrate, conic when moist, flattening in drying by the contraction of the elastic annulus, leaving the oblique rostrum prominently projecting, itself parting from the expanding mouth of the capsule and carrying with it shreds of the ruptured membrane; calyptra cuculliform, .75^mm. in length, tipped with a long whip-like awn, which equals or exceeds in length the rest of the calyptra.

The other characters agree with the description given in Sullivant's Mosses in Gray's Manual (4th ed., 1863, p. 629), as follows:

"Stems frond-like, flat, mostly simple (about 1' long and 1" broad), rooting only at the bulb-like base; leaves 2-ranked, complicate, closely imbricating, erect; those on the middle of the stem elongated-oblong, obliquely truncate, shortly acuminate, increasing in size as they ascend, the perichsetial leaves attenuated into a long and linear, flexuous, pellucid, flat, equitant and slightly serrulate point, longer than the lamina; areolation above sub-rotund, below oblong, that of the point of the perichaetial leaves linear; costa percurrent, its upper part narrowly winged; dioecious; flowers of both kinds terminal."

In the Memoirs of the American Academy (n. ser., p. 57. t. i.) Sullivant says: "The genus of our moss must remain uncertain until the discovery of its fruit, which we may now expect," etc. If further exammation of more mature specimens proves the lack of teeth, then the South American Eustichia longirostris, Brid., should be transferred to another genus. For description of E. longirostris, see G. Mitten, Jour Linn. Soc. xii., p. 603 and Brid. Bry. Univ. For descriptions of Eustichium Norvegicum, see Br. Eu., fas. xlii.; Brid., Vol. ii., p. 674; and C. Müller, Syn. Musc. Frond, i., p. 42.

Explanation Of The Figures.—

Fig. 1. Calyptra magnified 50 diameters. Fig. 4. Calyptra and columella seen through a natural rupture in the wall of the capsule.

Fig. 2. The fresh capsule with conical operculum, magnified 50 diameters. Fig. 6. An entire plant magnified 5 diameters.

Fig. 3. The same dried with detached and contracted operculum. Fig. 5. Another view of the same.