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Manual of the New Zealand Flora.
1. Phylloglossum, Kunze
1. Phylloglossum, Kunze.
A small stemless plant, consisting of an oblong tuber (proto-corm) which is annually reproduced, and which bears at its apes a tuft of terete subulate leaves. Boots few, simple, springing from above the tuber directly below the leaves. Peduncle arising from the apex of the tuber and surrounded at its base by the leaves, page 1033short, erect, simple or very rarely forked, ending in a short fertile spike or cone. Bracts several, imbricated, broadly ovate, cuspidate, each supporting a single reniform 1 - celled sporangium, which dehisces by a longitudinal slit. Spores small, numerous, with three lines radiating from the apex.
A genus of a single species, found in New Zealand, Tasmania, Victoria, and West Australia.
| 1. | P. Drummondii, Kunze in Bot. Zeit. (1843) 721.—Whole plant 1–2 ½ in. high, green, perfectly glabrous. Tuber small, oblong, producing another (rarely two more) during the growing season, the new tuber remaining dormant during the summer and reproducing the plant the following winter, the original tuber and its leaves shrivelling after the ripening of the sporangia. Leaves usually from 4–10, but varying in number from 1 or 2 to 15 or even 20, ⅓–¾ in. long, linear-subulate, acute, fleshy, cylindrical. Peduncle 2 or 3 times as long as the leaves, stout, erect. Spike ⅙–⅓ in. long, oblong-ovoid, terete; bracts 10–30, broad, the erect cusp overtopping the sporangium.—Hook. Ic. Plant. 908; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. ii. 51; Fl. Tasm. ii. 154; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 388; Bak. Fern Allies, 7; Thoms. N.Z. Ferns, 102. Lycopodium sanguisorba, Spring. Monog. Lycop. ii. 36.
North Island: Barren clay hills from the North Cape to the Thames Valley and the Middle Waikato (Lake Waikare), not uncommon. South Island: Said to have been gathered near Picton by Helms, and on Banks Peninsula by Armstrong, but I have seen no specimens. A remarkable little plant, differing from all other Lycopods in its vegetative characters, but with the spike and sporangia of Lycopodium. The tuber and its leaves are so similar in appearance and mode of development to the embryonic riant of some species of Lycopodium, and notably to that of L. cernuum, with its protocorm or embryonic tubercle, and protophylls or primordial leaves, that both Bower and Treub expressed the opinion that Phylloglossum should be regarded as a permanently embryonic form of Lycopod. The important discovery recently made by Thomas that the prothallium and development of the embryo is of the same type as that of Lycopodium cernuum may be regarded as a satisfactory proof of the correctness of this view; and it seems in every wav probable that Thomas is correct in considering Phylloglossum to be the most primitive ot existing Lycopodiaceæ. For information on the subject the student should consult Professor Bower's two memoirs "On the Development and Morphology of Phylloglossum Drummondii" and "On the Morphology of the Spore-producing Members" (Trans. Roy. Soc. 1886, p. 665, and 1894, p. 508–510); also Treub's paper in the Annals of the Bot. Garden of Buitenzorg, Vol. viii., p. 1 et seq.; and Professor Thomas's "Preliminary Account of the Prothallium of Phylloglossum" (Proc. Roy. Soc, Vol. Ixix., p. 285–291, reprinted in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xxxiv. 402–408). |