]^48 The Philippine Journal of Science igu 
Examination of a fragment of the type, kindly loaned me by 
the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, showed that 
this was what had actually happened. 
In reality, the essential structure of these ferns is exactly that 
of typical Phyllitis (Scolopendrium) . The sorus is double, the 
sporangia springing from two veins, one on each side, separate 
back to the costa. This origin of the sporangia is clearly shown 
by a section across a sorus of the type specimen of Diplora in- 
tegrifolia. These fertile veins are inconspicuous because the 
indusium and sporangia spring from and obscure them, and the 
sorus reaches down very nearly to the costa. In the European 
Phyllitis Scolopendrium, the sori are remote ; but nobody would 
attach great importance to this character, and in Japanese spec- 
imens of the same species the sterile space at the base of the 
veins is sometimes exceedingly short. 
As to the vein supposed by Baker to bear the sorus, there 
is a conspicuous raised line running down the middle of the 
sorus, and midway between the two fertile veins, but it is like 
the structures called spurious veins in some species of Davallia 
and Angiopteris, in that it does not originate in the costa, but 
at the lower end ends blindly in the tissue between the veins. 
Contrary to first appearance, and to the diagnosis of Diplora, it 
bears neither sporangia nor indusium. It is without vascular 
tissue. 
Diplora as a genus therefore rests on characters which do 
not exist in nature, and the plants on which it was founded are 
typical Phyllitis. The second supposed species, Diplora Cadieri 
Christ, was promptly declared by its author ^ to be nothing more 
than a form of Stenochlaena, 
The very closely related supposed genus, Triphlebia, is like- 
wise invalid, resting on characters which are not diagnostic, as 
I discovered some time ago,* working with perfectly authentic 
specimens of the type species, though not with type specimens. 
I have now ample material of the original collections of Cuming. 
Triphlebia was described as distinguishable from Phyllitis by 
the position of the sorus, the indusia being borne as in Phyllitis, 
and by a raised crest where the halves of the indusium meet. 
The sporangia are in reality borne on the veins at the sides 
of the double sorus, as in Phyllitis. There is usually a raised 
line where the half-indusia meet, and another, as in Diplora, 
ff 
■Verb. Schweizer. Naturf. Ges. (1906), Reprint (1907) 6. 
* This Journal 1 (1906) 152. 
