CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MORPHOLOGY OF LEPTOCHILUS AND PARALEPTOCHILUS

Nayar , B. K. (Natl. Bat. Gard., Lucknow, India.) Contributions to the morphology of Leptochilus and Paraleptochilus. Amer. Jour. Bot. 50(4): 301–308. lllus. 1963.—Morphology of L. axillaris and P. decurrens is described; L. axillaris is epiphytic, possessing a wide creeping, soft, parenchymatous rhizome, covered sparsely by peltate paleae, while P. decurrens is rupicaulous, with a short, brittle rhizome having slender sclerenchyma strands and densely covered by basally attached paleae. The vascular cylinder of the rhizome is dictyostelic and composed of a large number of closely placed, thick, vascular bundles with characteristic, thickened, endodermal cells in L. axillaris; it is dictyostelic and composed of a few, slender, distantly placed vascular strands in P. decurrens. Leaf traces are multiple strands which in P. decurrens originate in alternate succession from either side of the dorsal median vascular bundle of the rhizome, but in L. axillaris, from the lateral vascular bundles of the rhizome. The branch traces are paired strands which are lateral in the former and medianly placed in the latter. Scattered sclerenchyma strands occur in the stipe of P. decurrens. Paraphyses are absent in P. decurrens, but filamentous paraphyses occur in L. axillaris. The spores are bilateral and smooth-walled in both, and the prothalli are of the branched, ribbonlike type developing as in Colysis. Prothalli are naked in L. axillaris, but bear sparse mammillate marginal hairs in P. decurrens.