The Philippine Journal of Science, C. Botany. 
Vol. VII, No. 1, April, 1912. 
THE GENUS THAYERIA 
By Edwin Bingham Copeland. 
{From the College of Agriculture, University of the PKilippineB, 
Los BanoSf P. /.) 
The genus Thayeria was described by myself about six years 
ago,^ from sterile specimens collected in the mountains north 
of Zamboanga. The type species was given the name T. Comur 
copia. It was found on a ridge above the source of the Sax 
River, a hurried visit to the place requiring three days of hard 
travel. I made the trip twice in 1905, the second time for the 
special purpose of finding fruiting fronds of this fern, but 
without success. In the same year I collected sterile specimens 
in Lepanto-Bontoc, but could find none fertile. Baker had de- 
scribed a New Guinea plant collected by Beccari, with essentially 
identical vegetative structures, as Polypodium nectar if erum ;^ 
and these structures are so peculiar that it seemed probable that 
the fertile fronds were also alike. As far as my specimens 
showed, the identity was so perfect that I ascribed my Luzon 
plant to Baker's species, as Thayeria nectarifera, 
Thayeria is a fern of the Drynaria group, as shown unmis- 
takably by the very stout, fleshy rhizome, with a dense coat of 
brown scales, the structure and venation of the leaf, and very 
characteristic splitting off of the segments from the midrib, 
the humus-gathering habit, and various minor details. Its es- 
sential peculiarity is the specialization of branches of the rhi- 
zome, as phyllopodia. Each of these branches bears a single 
large leaf, the lower part of which is very broad, with the sides 
r^dled together so as to form a broad cup like a cornucopia. 
The end of the branch is in the bottom of this cup, where it bears 
a dense cluster of roots. In the cup falling leaves and twigg 
collect and decay. Each branch makes therefore a sort of com- 
*This Journal 1 (1906) Supplement 166, Plate £8. 
"Malesia 2: 247, Plate 65. 
41 
