8 con: land. 



Helminthostachys zeylanica (L.) Hooker, (Plate HI.) 



Rhizome stout, creeping underground ; stipes 20 to 35 em high; sterile 

 Begment 18 to 35 em each way, cut to the base into 3 parts each of 

 which is pinnatifid or pinnate with 1 to 5 pinna?, which are lanceolate, 

 2 to 3 cm broad, herbaceous, entire or irregularly sinuate-toothed; stipe of 

 fertile segmenl about 10 cm high, the spike-like panicle rattier shorter. 



India to New Caledonia and northern Australia, northward to Formosa. 



2. .MAKATTIACEJC. 



Stem usually large ami globose, rarely creeping; fronds circinate in 



vernation, provided with persistent, more or less fleshy stipules; sori borne 

 on the hacks of veins; sporangia large, formed from a group of cells, 

 with a wall more than one cell thick, opening by a longitudinal slit 

 (which rarely shortens to a pore). 



A small and isolated family of ferns of striking aspect, including only Danaea, 

 of tropical America, and the following live genera: 



Sporangia of each soma not fused together {Anffiopterideae) 



Fronds at least bipinnate 1. Angionieria 



Fronds simply pinnate. 



Sori on the specialized border of the pinna 2. Macroglossmu 



Sori midway between costs and margin ;!. Archangiopteri* 



Sporangia in each sorus fused together. 



Sori elongate, veins free 4 Marattia 



Sori round, veins anastomosing 5. Ohriatentenia 



ANGIOPTERIS Eoffmann. 



Very large ferns with thick, globose, or rarely trunk-like stems, covered 

 with leaf-scars and large, fleshy stipules,; stipe stout, with an enlarged 

 pulvinus at the hase; frond usually hipinnate, rarely more divided, pinme 

 attached to racMs by pnlvini; sori marginal or suhmarginal; sporangia 

 usually 6 to 14, at most about 20, in contact hut not fused into a 

 synangium. 



A genus of majestic ferns, most abundant in the Malay region, extending to 

 Polynesia, the Himalaya, and tropical Africa, Hooker and Baker, and most 

 other recenl writers reduce all to a single species; at the other extreme is the 

 monograph of l)e Vriese & Hartig, describing SO species. The number of tenable 



species is certainly large, hut the task of determining which of De Vriese ,V 

 Hartig's species are such, and of describing not a few others, must he left for 

 anot her monographer. 



1 give separate mention here only to the Philippine species recently distin- 

 guished by Christ. 



Angiopteris evecta (Foist.) JJoffm. 



", . . Pinna? opposite, oblong, with linear-acuminate apex, serrate, sori 



in a continuous suhmarginal series." Between the real veinlets arc 



hyaline pseudo-veins of sclerenehyma, recurrent from the margin almost 



(o the costs ; up to 20 sporangia in a sorus. 



Tahiti; and commonly treated as covering the whole range of the genus, and 

 including all the forms. 



