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Note on Asplenium Glenniei Baker in Synopsis Filicum, 



2d Ed, p. 488 



By C. W. Hope 



In August, 1898, I had the pleasure of making the acquain- 

 tance of Professor Underwood, while he was examining- certain 

 genera of ferns in the herbarium of the Royal Gardens at Kew, 

 and I then drew his attention to what I considered a remarkable 

 instance of a locally plentiful Himalayan fern being sparingly found 

 in a few localities in Mexico and in Arizona, U. S. A. havin^^ 



1 1 * ' o 



been described from the American specimens as a new species, 

 and I asked leave to send my views as to this fern for publication 



in the Bulletin of the Tokrey Botaxical Club. 



In the first edition of the Synopsis Filicum, under Asplciiiinn 

 fontauuin Bernh., A. exiguuDi Bedd., from the Nilgiris, is men- 

 tioned as being a less divided form, with narrow fronds and 

 ebcncous rhachis, and the authors go on to say that a similar plant 

 had been gathered in Mexico by Mr. Glennic. But in the second 

 edition Mr. Baker set up a new species— 'M. Glcnnid Baker, 



dco, CoiLsid GIninic, Bourgeau, 252. — Very like some of 

 the forms of fontanumr When at Kew, in 1888, I pointed out 

 to Mr. Baker and Colonel Bcddomc that the specimens of A. 

 Glenmci in the Royal Herbarium were merely a common north- 

 w^est Indian fern, which 1 had been calling A. exinnmi Bedd. 



Me 



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Mr. Baker objected that there was a wide interval between Mexico 



and the western Himalaya, and Colonel Bcddomc remarked that 

 neither the Himalayan nor the Mexican plant could be his because 

 the fronds were not prolonged at the apex. Prolongation of the 

 rhachis into a "naked tail often bearing a young plant " was a 

 character given by Beddome in his original description of the 

 species, in the "Ferns of S. India," published in 1873, though 

 this entry was omitted from his Handbook of 1883, where he de- 

 graded the plant to the rank of variety. This proliferous form of 

 the tip I found, on returning to India, to be a normal, though per- 

 haps not an invariable character of the Himalayan plant, as it is 



y-/, 



" rhachis much 



(58) 



