228 Transactions. — Botany. 



Hab. Among crags on the summit of the high hill Puke- 

 kotuku, near Puketapu, County of Hawke's Bay; 1859: W.C. 

 Petane Valley, north of Napier, same county; 1881: Mr. A. 

 Hamilton. 



Obs. I. This fern is pretty closely allied to the two well- 

 known British species A. trichomanes and A. viride ; also, 

 (though more remotely) to the New Zealand species A. flabelU- 

 folium, and it naturally belongs to the same section and group 

 (Euasplenium) ; but, while it possesses a very strong sectional 

 likeness, it is very distinct from them all in several grave 

 characters — as colour of frond and stipe, shape, size, substance 

 and position of pinna?, their peculiar venation, the form and 

 place of sori, and their small, narrow, and persistent involucre, 

 and the highly curious basal scales. 



II. I have long known this plant, and, though I have 

 several times taken it up for examination, I set it aside, 

 thinking it to be a variety of A. trichomanes, or of A. viride, 

 or a hybrid between them and A. flabelUfolium, if those two 

 British species (vera) were also denizens of this country. I 

 have now, however, thoroughly and exhaustively examined 

 this plant, having plenty of good specimens, and also standard 

 drawings, with dissections,* of those two British species [supra i ; 

 and the result I have here given in my rather long and close 

 description of this fern. With me, such an amount of differen- 

 tial and important characters, found, too, on so many speci- 

 mens, settles the matter. 



III. Some of my specimens of this fern are, to say the 

 least of them, "sportive" — their rhachises largely forked at 

 tips with a long terminal pinna ; others possessing a few very 

 long and scattered ligulate pinna?, 8-10 lines long, but scarcely 

 regular enough to be deemed a variety. 



2. A. flabelUfolium, Cav., var. ramosum, Col. 



Plant tufted, G-9-fronded, prostrate, spreading. Stipe light- 

 green, slender, glabrous (also rhachis), 2-5 niches long. Frond 

 dark-green, pinnate, main rhachis 10-14 inches long, sub- 

 flexuous, branched above ; tips long, filiform, naked, proliferous; 

 branches very slender, straight, 4-7 inches long ; pinnae petiolu- 

 late, free, alternate, (the lowest pair opposite,) 18-24 on each 

 side of main rhachis, 3-8 lines long, 2-5 lines broad, of various 

 sizes and shapes : — (1) broadly deltoid, and 3-lobed ovate or 



* I may especially mention (for drawings, etc.,) Sir W. J. Hooker's 

 "British Ferns;" Sowerby's "English Botany;" Newman's "British 

 Ferns;" Bentham's "British Flora;" and Beddome's "Ferns of South 

 and of British India;" also, for additional descriptions, "Species Filicum," 

 Hooker; "Synopsis Kilicum," Baker; and the description of A. tricho- 

 manes in "Flora Australiensis," etc. 



