The leaves of the true mosses and those of the club-mosses (Lycopodium, Selaginella) being somewhat alike in general appearance and in ontogeny, might be, and indeed have been, regarded as homologous on that ground.
In his experiments upon this subject Fraunhofer employed plates of glass dusted over with lycopodium, or studded with small metallic disks of uniform size; and he found that the diameters of the rings were proportional to the length of the waves and inversely as the diameter of the disks.
Stationary waves are formed in the air in the dust-tube if the length is rightly adjusted by the closely-fitting piston, and the lycopodium dust collects at the nodes in little heaps, the first being at the fixed end and the last just in front of the piston on the sounder.
If after the deposition of the drop, a little lycopodium be scattered over the surface, it is seen that a circular space surrounding the drop, of about the size of a shilling, remains bare, and this, however often the dusting be repeated, so long as any of the carbon bisulphide remains.
Small tuberous shoots, comparable on a large scale with the bulbils of Lycopodium Selago, are occasionally produced in the axils of some of the persistent leaf-bases; these are characteristic of sickly plants, and serve as a means of vegetative reproduction.