The Journal of Indian Botany/Volume 1/September 1919/Prothallia and Sporelings of three New Zealand Species
Prothallia of Lycopodium.
C. J. Chamberlain, Prothallia and Sporelings of three New Zealand Species. Botanical Gazette, Vol. LXIII, No. 1, pp. 50 — 64.
The author gives short resume of the literature of the subject, followed by notes on L. laterale, L. oolubile, and L. scraiosum, collected in New Zealand. He finds a green leafy prothallium, with protocorm developed, only in the first, which is a terestial species. The other two species are epiphytic, and the prothallia are subterranean, with no protocorm. He suggests that this differentiation occurs throughout the genus : and that the green leafy prothallium represents the original type, and that the change to the suprophytic subterranean type occurred in consequence of a delay in germination (some spores require from 6 to 8 years) which allowed only those spores that had reached some place of safety, i.e., had been buried, to produce plants.
E. A. Spressard gives (l.c. pp. 67—78) a very interesting account of the finding of prothallia of L. clavatrum, L. obscurum, L. annotinuv, and L. lucidulum, nearly all quite close together, in an open space near Marquette Michigan. They were found only on small knolls covered partly by Polytrichum and partly by a grass, or sometimes almost bare. He suggests as a reason for this that such spores as were carried and fell on these spots were first of all beaten into the ground by rain, then covered by the shifting sand, and finally conveyed to a favourable depth by percolating water. This theory worked well or guide to where to look for the prothallia. The piper establishes the fact that prothallia have been found in America, and announces the discovery of two new species of prothallia— L. obscurum and L. lucidulum.
P. F. F.