ERYTHEA

A MONTHLY journal of Botany, edited by members of the Department of Botany at the University of California. Devoted to every department of botanical investigation and criticism. . Historical papers, general articles on systematic and geographic botany, and reviews of new literature, will continue to be features of the journal. The subscription price is $1.50 a year in advance; to Great Britain and the continent of Europe, 7 shillings. Single copies 25 cents. No discount to dealers.

Address

1

WILLIS L. JEPSON,

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA.

University of California.

CHAPTERS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF

HEPATICOLOGY.-III.

By MARSHALL A. HOWE.

The Exopaσis1 of Fabius Columna is a work of some importance in the History of Hepaticology, inasmuch as we here find the beginning of the written history of three species, representing as many genera, namely, Conocephalus conicus, Targionia hypophylla, and a Pellia which Lindberg refers to endiviæfolia rather than to epiphylla. One page is given to good figures of the plant described, rendering the determinations doubly sure. Columna describes Conocephalus in this manner:

"It arises on wet, shady rocks, especially those facing the north, and adheres by very fine silky roots, which are abundant under the leaves. The latter are a finger's breadth in width and twice that or more in length, green above or a little yellowish, scaly like the skin of a serpent or of a snail [Limax], a small elevated point being visible in the middle of each scale. It does not produce a flower so far as we have been able to observe unless it is identical with the fruit. It bears from the slightly cleft, sinuous, lunulate extremity of the leaf, a white, smooth, firm, juicy, diaphanous stem, of the thickness of a rush and four inches long, above which rests a small pileus like that of a fungus, divided below into five parts, under which the fruit is contained. The pileus is at first green, a little inclining to yellow, afterwards becomes yellow, and ends with being reddish; these lower divided parts bursting asunder show the black fruit and when opened the frnit falls as a black-purple dust, though it has hitherto been juicy and green. This sooty dust we have learned to consider as seed. It sends up its

1Minus cognitarum rariorumque nostro cœlo orientium stirpium Expparis; Rome, 1616. I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. C. H. Wright of the Royal Gardens at Kew for a transcript of Columna's treatment of "Lichen" and to the Director, Dr. W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, by whose kind permission the extract was sent.

ERYTHEA, Vol. III., No. 1, [2 January, 1895.]

stalk in the month of March and is mature in April." This, it hardly needs to be remarked, much excels any description of Hepatica that we have seen up to this time. The allusions to the areola and pores of the thallus and to the spore-dust are especially noteworthy. The paragraph has the heading "Lichen Plinii primus," to which title Columna adds the word "pileatus."

The Pellia, supposed by Lindberg to be endiviæfolia, is described under the heading "Lichen alter minor caule calceato vπodedeμévw." It is said that "this delights in the same places and arises in a similar manner, but is smaller in every part, on account of which difference we have called it 'the less.' The stem is vrodedeμévw, that is to say, calceate. It has a more delicate and smaller leaf, very thin, translucent, so that it is indistinctly seen in the shade; when it is older, it passes from purple to blackish. It is smooth and not squamous, but from the back something almost like a scabbard or calceus, with a fimbriate mouth, arises a little, from which at the Ides of March there springs forth a smooth, blackish-green little ball of the size of the chick-pea [Orobus]. This afterwards leaps upward, supported by a stem four fingers high; it is now a little lutescent and dehisces into a yellow flower of four leaflets, containing within a great quantity of very fine impalpable threads. The stem which was round, smooth, naked, juicy, diaphanous, white, and easily injured by the touch, falls to the ground on drying. The roots are silky-villous-none more delicate can be found. This plant is smaller by a fourth part than the one described above."

Targionia hypophylla is saluted as the "Lichen alter acaulis ὑποφυλλοκαρπος” and is described in words which we translate as follows: "This delights in a habitat like those of the former species and is met with at the same time in mossy places and others such as have been mentioned above. This kind is the smallest, for its leaves rarely equal in magnitude the nail of the little finger. It is green and is 20p. cit., p. 332.

sprinkled over with whitish elevated points, so that it seems rough. In place of a flower preceding the fruit, it has on the lower part of the leaf, while it is yet small, cartilages on either side, purple, then black, set opposite to each other after the manner of ribs or valves. These you can raise with the edge of a knife; they differ from the leaf in that the latter is green. When, however, it is larger, the entire leaf grows from purple to black, swells at the extremity, and sends forth fruit of the same color, like that of Orobus in size, soft and filled with a watery whitish juice; afterwards it sends out something saffron-colored, the result of greater maturity. The black cortex being ruptured, a pericarp, as it were, contains the fruit, covered within by a yellow pellicle. This contains a yellow dust; yet the fruit is juicy if rubbed, and, this moisture being immediately dissipated by the heat of the finger, the infected finger is recognized by the yellow dust. The leaves adhere by very delicate and extremely short white fibrils."

In the "Prodromus Theatri Botanici "s of Caspar Bauhin is a paragraph on Muscus fontanus or Hepatica aquatica, in which the author states that these terms are applied in a triple sense. To the "greater and less" of Lobelius, Tabernæmontanus, and others, he adds a third called the " Muscus fontanus with racemose capitula." He describes it as having "far smaller leaves, pale green and somewhat hirsute, joined in the manner of scales, among which are brought forth very many naked capillary two-inch pedicels, each of which bears a small capitulum, compact like a raceme and rufescent," so far as he can conclude from a dry specimen sent by a correspondent whom he names. This plant is identified with Preissia by Lindberg. In the "Pinax "4 of C. Bauhin, published three years later, under the chapterheading, "Muscus Saxatilis vel Lichen " are listed nine supposed species of which the first seven are hepatic forms. 3Basel, 1620. The copy consulted was of the second edition (1671), p. 152.

4Pinax Theatri Botanici; Basel, 1623. Page 362 in edition seen (1671).

The first three, Lichen petræus latifolius sive Hepatica fontana, Lichen petræus stellatus, and Lichen petræus umbellatus, all belong to Marchantia polymorpha. The others are the Preissia first described in the Prodromus and the three of Columna-Conocephalus, Pellia, and Targionia. C. Bauhin's list of five species is the most complete that we have met with up to this point.

John Parkinson in his "Theatrum Botanicum "5 gives nearly two large quarto pages to descriptions and figures of "Liverwort." He recognized seven species, but, as the first two may be reduced to M. polymorpha and as the seventh is a lichen used for making purple dye, we have left but the five of C. Bauhin. Parkinson repeats Gerard's error of accompanying his first description of Marchantia with the figure of a Sticta. In his description of the smaller form of Marchantia-Hepatica minor stellaris--he says that "there is also another sort that beareth not divided leaves and the small stalks have round heads, not differing in any other thing from the last," which recalls Johnson's treatment of the male and female forms in the revision of Gerard's Herball. But, on figuring these forms, Parkinson transposes the names, calling the one with rays Hepatica minor umbellatus (apparently disregardful of grammatical endings) and that with "round heads" Hepatica minor stellaris— evidently a blunder of inadvertence, especially as others of a like nature occur in the work. He states that three of his hepatics are taken from Columna and a fourth from Bauhin, leaving Marchantia alone of which he had personal knowledge. Figures of Conocephalus and Pellia are subjoined, in addition to those of Marchantia alluded to above.

In Tomus III of the "Historia Plantarum Universalis" of Johann Bauhin and Johann Heinrich Cherler, a page is given up to "Lichen sive Hepatica fontana." The authors indulge in a discussion of the Lichen of various predecessors,

5London, 1640; pp. 1314-1316.

6Embrun, 1651; p. 750, Tomus III.