New Zealand Hepaticae (Liverworts)—IX A Review of the New Zealand Species of the Genus Lepidozia By E. Amy Hodgson Kiwi Valley, Wairoa. Hawke's Bay [Received by the Editor, January 21, 1955.] Abstract Introduction including discussion on 3 separate systems of classification within the Genus–Description of Genus—Key to Species—Descriptions of 33 Species including 3 new ones, L. remotifolia, L. meridiana, with var. paludicola, L. Martin—Telaranca treated as a Subgenus—L. longiscypha, a Tasmanian species recorded from New Zealand for the first time—L. tetradactyla re-instated with L. Lindenbergin as a synonym. Introduction Lepidozia is an important genus of the primitive family Lepidoziaceae. It is a large genus, more plentiful in the Southern than in the Northern Hemisphere, and with many tropical species. It differs from Bazzama, in that the leaves have more and deeper divisions, and in the stipules being, in most cases, similar in shape to the leaves and smaller. In the Synopsis Hepaticarum (1845), Gottsche. Lindenberg and Nees divided up the genus under the headings of Microphyllie, Incisae, Communes, and Capillares. It is anomalous that with 30 or more years of priority, these names to all intents and purposes have been dropped, because Spruce (1876), in addition to ignoring them, replaced them with his own 3 sections Eu-Lepidozia, Ptilolepidozia and Microlepidozia, and placed these on a permanently higher level by calling them Subgenera. Later, Spruce included his Ptilolepidozia in Eu-Lepidozia. Stephani (1909), who had a wider general knowledge of the genus than Spruce, divided the genus into Symmetricae and Asymmetricae. This is probably the best of the three systems, as the grouping is the simplest and the most natural. But here is another anomaly. Stephani's names, for better or for worse, technically have no standing, either as subgenera, because they contain the types of Spruce's subgenera, or as sections, because they contain the types and lectotypes of the Synopsis Sections, whatever these may be. It thus appears that the Rules of Nomenclature can be a hindrance to progressive improvements in taxonomy. As regards Spruce's Subgenera, his Eu-Lepidozia automatically becomes Lepidozia Subg. Lepidozia, as it contains the type of the genus, L. reptans His Subgenus Microlepidozia with its Section Telaranea is a vexed question. As constituted by Spruce, it was characterised by small plants with transverse leaves and unistratose perianths. But actually, unistratose perianths are shared by his Eu-Lepidozia as in L. Martini and L. tetradactyla. Evans' discovery that in the branching, the divided leaf is ventral as well as dorsal, does not hold either as an exclusive character, as may be seen in Lindenberg's plate of L. laevifolia (1846) with incubous leaves, which shows three divided leaves which are ventral. Spruce's Section Telaranea of his Subgenus Microlepidozia with its subtransverse leaves and thin-walled perianth will fit in neither subgenus, which