Throughout Lycksele Lapland there are no other domestic animals than Reindeer and Dogs. The latter are generally of a hoary grey colour, and a middling size.
The Laplanders use no artificial beverage.
[38] The more correct characters, founded by Haller and Swartz on the anthers, reduce this plant very successfully to the genus Orchis, with Satyrium hircinum likewise.
June 9.
Near the town of Umoea, in a springy spot on the side of a hill, I met with three or four curious species of moss.
1. A kind of Hypnum or Polytrichum, with a branched stem bearing flowers in the form of shields. (Mnium fontanum Sp. Pl. Bartramia fontana Fl. Brit. The male plant.)
From the root arises an oblique stem (a) about half an inch long, entirely clothed with very sharp-pointed leaves. From
thence the main stem (b) grows perpendicularly to the height of an inch, of a purple colour, clothed with ovate, acute, membranous, whitish scales, each half embracing the stem. Between the bases of these is a solitary line or rib, into which they are inserted in an alternate order. I imagine the oblique part of the stem (a) to be of autumnal or winter growth, and the upright portion (b) to have been put forth in summer or spring. At the summit of the latter stands a sort of blossom (c), composed of six scales, of which the three lower are opposite and shortest; the three upper larger, ovate, pointed, somewhat
spreading, permanent, of a whitish green colour. Within these scales or petals is a flat, or slightly convex, disk, composed of innumerable very slender whitish filaments with reddish tips, much shorter than the surrounding scales. Can these filaments be the stamens? They are by no means rudiments of leaves. One, two or three branches grow out at the base of this flower, the latter being for the most part perennial, and go through the same mode of growth and flowering as the parent plant. The calyx therefore, contrary to the nature of the common Polytrichum, is proliferous from its base.