130 Rhodora [JuLy 
can be separated from most European P. vulgare, is in the scales of 
the rhizome. In most of the European plants the scales are very 
prolonged into a capillary tip; in the plants of Pacific America they 
are less prolonged. But such plants as those distributed by Dörfler 
in his Herbarium Normale as no. 3687, P. vulgare, forma variegata 
from Germany, have the scales quite like those of the western Ameri- 
can plants; and certainly there is nothing to separate this German 
material specifically from such representatives of P. californicum as 
Abrams & MeGregor's no. 31 from Ventura Co., California, Kellogg 
& Harford’s no. 1164 from Lone Mountain, California, Heller’s no. 
13,090 from Butte Co. or his no. 5030 from Sonoma Co., Parish's 
no. 4373 from San Bernardino Co., or Abrams’s no. 3100 from San 
Diego Co. Similarly Dórfler's no. 3687 is quite as indistinguishable 
from such representatives of P. falcatum as Bongard's Sitkan material 
sent out as P. vulgare, virginianum, Funston’s no. 13 from Yakutat 
Bay, Eastwood's no. 798 from Shagway or G. R. Vasey’s no. 42 from 
Washington, the latter all originally and correctly distributed as 
P. vulgare but specifically inseparable from plants passing as P. 
falcatum. 
In European Polypodium vulgare and the western American P. 
californicum, P. falcatum and P. hesperium the scales of the rhizome, 
though varying in different plants from pale-cinnamon to dark brown, 
are individually of tolerably uniform color throughout and (under 
high magnification) show a similarly close cellular structure with 
thin cell-walls; in the eastern American P. virginianum, on the other 
hand, the scales commonly have a deeper-colored median band and 
they are of much looser or more open structure, and the cell-walls are 
thickish. The late D. C. Eaton, leaning too confidently upon Europ- 
ean authors, described the rootstock of the eastern American plant 
as "covered with ovate-acuminate brownish chaffy scales, peltately 
attached near the base;"! but as Miss Slosson points out in her 
description of the eastern plant: "I find a sinus leading from the 
base to the point of attachment. An over-lapping of the sides of 
this sinus often makes the scales appear peltately attached. ”? 
Miss Slosson thus accurately describes the basal scales of P. virginia- 
num, while Eaton's description accords with that of European 
! D. C. Eaton, Ferns N. A. i. 239 (1879). 
7 Slosson, How Ferns Grow, 49 (1906). 
