226 Transactions. — Botany. 



base of a branch. Fertile fronds : the pinnae are shorter, nar- 

 rower, and more distant on rhachis than in L. fluviatilis ; they 

 are also forked and dichotomously branched near their tops ; 

 branches 6-7 inches long, very narrow, flexuous, and curved ; 

 the pinnae small, 2-4 lines long, very numerous. Sori copious ; 

 involucre large, laciniate at margins ; brown, very cellular. 



Hab. Dry forests near Norsewood. County of Waipawa ; 

 1882-86: W.C. 



Obs. I. I have long known this pretty variety of Lomaria 

 (for such I deem it,) and have, also, shown specimens of it 

 at the meetings of our Society ; and for some time have been 

 undecided whether to describe it as a sp. nor., or only as a 

 variety of L. fluviatilis. I was the more inclined to make it a 

 sp. nov. from the manner in which Kaoul and other botanists 

 have described L. fluviatilis, (L. rotundifolia of Kaoul,) including 

 also their drawings of that plant, evidently showing it to be a 

 much smaller and shorter yet wider-fronded fern ; but, on the 

 other hand, there was also my own still earlier description* 

 of it than Eaoul's ; which, in the main, agrees with this, the 

 large L. fluviatilis of our Hawke's Bay and interior forests. 



II. M. Eaoul discovered his fern at Akaroa (South Island), 

 and describes it fully as a sp. nov. In his description he says : — 

 " Frondes confertissimae, .... breviter stipitatae, oblongo- 

 lanceolatae ; 2-2^ decimetr. longa. Pinnae (v. lobi) 14-20." 

 {he. cit., p. 9.) And his drawing of a small fern, in his folio 

 work, agrees with his description. 



III. Sir J. D. Hooker also, in his " Flora Tasmania?," gives 

 a similar drawing, though a little larger, of the Tasmanian 

 plant, with very short and almost glabrous stipes, and glabrous 

 rhachises. In his description he says : " Fronds 8-18 inches 

 high, with very short stipes," etc. In my description, I had 

 said, "This fern in its native forests presents a very graceful 

 appearance. It there attains a large size, some fronds having 

 been observed between 2 and 3 feet in length. The fertile 

 fronds, generally 3 in number in each plant, are invariably 

 very erect, ascending directly from the centre ; while the nume- 

 rous barren fronds, .spread out horizontally in a half-procumbent 



* I first met with this fern in " December, 1841, in humid woods near 

 Waikare Lake, North Island;" and an early description of it (with others) 

 was published in 1812, in "The Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science," 

 vol. i , p. 377, under the name of L. rotundifolia, Col. M. Eaoul was also 

 in the spring and summer of that same year (1841), at Akaroa, South Island, 

 uhi'iv he dctrctt'd 1m inn ; and again there in L842 i:;. returning to Fiance 

 in August, 1843 ; and soon after he published his " Choix de Plantes de la 

 Nouvelle-Zelande," in which he, too, knowing nothing of mine, named his 

 fern L. rotundifolia, Raoul. Sir W. J. Hooker, however, in his " Species 

 Filicum," subsequently published it as being the L. fluviatilis oi Sprengel, 

 who I fancy had never seen a New Zealand specimen of it, but only a Tas- 

 manian one — viz., the Stegania fluviatilis of R. Brown, 



