MAXON—STUDIES OF TROPICAL AMERICAN FERNS. 157 
THE GENUS ODONTOSORIA. 
The genus Odontosoria, as recognized by Diels in the Pflanzen- 
familien of Engler and Prantl,' comprises two sections or subgenera, 
the first (Eu-Odontosoria) containing rather small species of erect 
or ascending habit and determinate growth,” the second (Stenoloma) 
containing three species of indefinite scandent growth. These two 
groups are entitled to recognition as distinct genera. Adopting this 
view, it is necessary to apply the name Odontosoria to the second 
group, the large climbing species, rather than to the first. The 
grounds for this treatment are presented in the following brief ac- 
count of the taxonomic history of the genus, with a review of the 
American species of true Odontosoria. 
Presl * appears to have been the first to use the name Odontosoria, 
his application of it being to an assemblage of 17 species constituting 
his fourth section of the genus Davallia. Included among these are 
species of both types mentioned above. Naturally, the simpler, 
smaller plants of upright, determinate growth are listed first, and 
one of these (Davallia tenuifolia Swartz) is figured.* Since this is 
the only species of this subgenus illustrated by Presl it might rea- 
sonably have been taken by later authors to typify the subgenus. 
Fée, however, who was the first to take up the name Odontosoria 
in a generic sense,° applied it to a single species, O. uncinella (Kunze) 
Fée (Davailia uncinella Kunze), which had not been published until 
1850. Under past and current botanical rules the name Odontosoria 
must be applied according to Fée’s use of it, and the type will there- 
fore be O. uncinella. Most of the species of Presl’s section Odon- 
tosoria were placed together by Fée under his new genus Stenoloma, 
and no distinctions were drawn as to the remarkably diverse habits 
of growth of the species thus included. 
John Smith, writing of the ferns of Hongkong in 1857,° reported 
upon three species of Odontosoria (0. tenuifolia, O. chinensis, and 
O. retusa),’ and added notes upon their generic characters. Later 
in the same year he elsewhere ® characterized the genus more fully, 
mentioning the fronds as “1 to 5 feet long, erect or flexuose, scan- 
dent,’”’ and listed two species in cultivation, O. tenuifolia and 0. 
1 Pflanzenfam. 11: 215. 1899. 
2 By error Diels includes here also O. schlechtendahlii, which is clearly of the second 
group. 
3 Tent. Pter. 129. 1836. 
4 Loe. cit. pl. 4. f. 27. 
5 Gen. Fil. 325. 1852. 
6 In Secm. Bot. Voy. Herald 429. 1857. 
7 The first two are forms of a single Old World species. 
8 Cat. Ferns 66. 1857. 
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