1869.] 



LOMARIA CILIATA. CEPHALOTUS FOLLICULARIS. 



175 



LOMARIA CILIATA. 



jNE of the smallest of arborescent greenhouse ferns, and one that must 



recommend itself to cultivators by its distinctness and beauty. It has 



6K5) been introduced into our gardens within the last two or three years by 



^ Messrs. Veitch and Sons, from New Caledonia, and in some respects bears 



a certain resemblance to Lomaria gibba, also a New Caledonian plant, and one of 



the most elegant evergreen ferns of modern introduction. 



Lomaria ciliata forms a slender arborescent caudex, of from six inches to a foot 

 in height, and an inch and a half in diameter. The fronds have a dark ebeneous 

 stipes, and an ovate or oblong-ovate lamina, which is pinnate below, pinnatifid 

 and caudate above ; the pinnae have shallow lobes, which are truncate and 

 emarginate, as also are the pinnae themselves, and in addition to this the whole 

 margin is fringed by long setiform teeth. The truncate or more or less emar- 

 ginate pinnae and lobes, and the ciliated margins, afford ready means of recog- 

 nition. The fertile frond is narrowed as in other Lomarias, and shows the same 

 kind of division as the sterile ones. A very characteristic figure, the only one 

 hitherto published, occurs in Baildons Nature-Printed Ferns, whence the 

 annexed woodcut of a sterile and fertile pinna are derived. M. 



CEPHALOTUS FOLLICULARIS. 



\EEE we have one of Nature's most singular vegetable forms. While in the 

 genus Nepenthes the pitchers appear to be extensions of the leaves, and 

 in Sarracenia the leaf itself seems hollowed out into the peculiar horn or 

 pitcher-like form, we find that in this remarkable plant the pitchers are 

 wholly distinct from the leaves. It is of small growth, a well-grown specimen 

 rarely getting more than eight or nine inches across, but it is nevertheless one of 

 remai-kable interest. It is a native of New Holland, and, therefore, cannot be 

 expected to live long in the intense broiling atmosphere, accompanied by insuffi- 

 cient light, to which we often see it subjected. I have seen the Cephalotus grown 

 in a house devoted to the culture of Victoria regia, and to flourish for a time, 



