A REMARKABLE NEW FERN FROM PANAMA 



By WILLIAM R. AL-XXON 



(With Three I'lates) 



Toward the last of February, 191 1, in the course of lieldwork 

 connected with the Smithsonian Biolog-ical Survey of the Panama 

 Canal Zone, I accompanied Mr. Henry Pittier from the Canal 

 Zone, where our work had been carried on up to that time, to 

 Chiriqui, the westernmost province of Panama, and spent nearly 

 all of March in collecting plants— mainly ferns and lower crypto- 

 gams— in the mountains north of David, the principal city of the 

 province. As indicating- in a general way the character of this 

 region, the following notes may be of value, inasmuch as other new 

 ferns will be described later, in advance of a proposed paper dealing 

 with the fern flora of Panama as a whole. 



Our base of operations was the small town of El Boquete, which 

 lies at an altitude of about 1,100 meters upon the immediate southern 

 base of the extensive east-and-west range of mountains here forming 

 the Continental Divide, and is reached from David by means of a 

 rather indifferent ox-road of nearly 35 miles. The contrast between 

 the gentle slopes of the open and nearly treeless wind-swept savan- 

 nah region, through which the trail extends practically its whole 

 length, and the territory from which the Rio Caldera issues abruptly 

 at the foot of the mountains, is most pronounced. Ferns, which 

 have been almost wholly wanting below, here become a conspicu- 

 ous part of the vegetation. From El Boquete a few trails lead in 

 various directions to the upper slopes of the heavily forested moun- 

 tains and under tolerably good weather conditions afford fair oppor- 

 tunity for collecting. In less favorable weather, however, the term 

 "rain forest" here acquires a new and truer significance ; conditions 

 of such intense and apparently perpetual humidity I have never 

 seen in other parts of tropical America as here in the Cordillera 

 of Chiriqui. 



The most extended trips taken from El Boquete were one of four 

 days to the summit of Chiriqui Volcano, which lies just south of 

 the Cordillera and wholly in the dry zone; another to the twin 

 peaks Cerro de la Horqueta, at the sunmiit of the Cordillera : and a 



Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections Vol. 56, No. 24 



