ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES 493 
but other coloring soon appears at their bases and spreads upward. 
In A. Platyneuron this coloring is at first light stramineous and 
spreads rapidly, involves in time the entire rachis and turns chest- 
nut brown or purplish-ebeneous, sometimes leaving touches of 
green. In C. rhizophyllus it seems to vary from light to dark 
brown and extends, ultimately, only part way up the petiole. In 
the hybrid it has been brown from the beginning, has now a dark 
purplish tinge, and extends some distance up the back of the 
rachis. The petioles themselves in C. rhézophyllus are more or 
less narrowly winged on the sides, in the hybrid, they are similar, 
though perhaps more slender, while in A. platyneuron they are 
wingless. 
The scales clothing the bases of the petioles in the three ferns 
are minute, acuminate, and reticulate in reddish-brown on an 
almost colorless background. In C. rhizophyllus they vary from 
lanceolate to lanceolate-deltoid or are occasionally ovate at base 
and narrowed suddenly above, and their margins are entire or some- 
times bear short cilia. In A. platyneuron they are elongate- 
linear or lance-linear and their margins bear cilia often long and 
Conspicuous. In the hybrid they are more or less intermediate in 
shape, resembling occasionally the scales of one parent more than 
those of the other, and their margins are entire or bear cilia vary- 
Ing in length, 
On comparing the hybrid plants with a large number of speci- 
mens of Asplenium ebenoides from Havana Glen, Alabama, and 
from Virginia, and with photographs of A. ebenoides from Virginia, 
Maryland, and Vermont, I find that the characteristics of the hy- 
brid are, with one exception, characteristics also of A. ebenotdes. 
This exception is the manner in which the base of the blade of 
the leaf varies, at different stages of development, in its resemblance 
to that of 4. platyneuron or of C. rhizophyllus. As already stated, 
in two of the plants of the hybrid when young the base of 
the blade resembled that of young A. p/atyneuron and in the 
other two that of young C. rhizophyllus, while in all four when 
“Older it resembled that of mature C. rhizophyllus. In young spec- 
ens of J. edenoides from Havana Glen, the only young wild 
Plant of this fern I have seen, the base of the blade resembles that 
of young C. rhizophyllus, while in older plants from Havana Glen 
