270 



ON A NEW SPECIES OF POLYPODIUM FROM 

 JAMAICA. 



By J. G. Bakee, F.R.S. 



This new species closely resembles in liabit the widely- spread 

 south temperate PoJypodmm austraJe Mett., from which it differs by 

 its globose sori, and short pilose less coriaceous fronds. We have 

 received it twice during the last year from Mr. Wm. Fawcett, 

 F.L.S., the Director of Public Gardens and Plantations. His 

 specimens were collected by Mr. Moore, below Morse's Gap. We 

 also received it in 1875 from Mr. G. S. Jenman, F.L.S., who labels 

 it, "from the highest mountains, rare." Its place in the series is 

 next to 97, P. jungerinannioides Klotzsch. 



Polypodium (Eupolypodium) Fawcettii, n. sp. — Caudex 

 erect. Stipes densely tufted, very short, slender, castaneous, 

 densely beset with spreading subulate brown pale^. Fronds lorate, 

 1-2 in. loDg, i in. broad, green, moderately firm in texture, obtuse, 

 entire, narrowed gradually to the base, thinly clothed on both 

 surfaces with short brown hairs. Veins erecto-patent, each with a 

 short anterior branch low down, bearing the sorus on its tip. Sori 

 crowded, globose, superficial, filling up nearly the whole space 

 between midrib and margin, absent from the lower third of the 

 frond. 



SHORT NOTES. 



Hybrid Thistles near Plymouth. — In July of this present year 

 I found, in a field on Leigham Estate, Egg Bucklaud, about half a 

 score of thistles, growing with Carduus nutans L. and C. crispus L., 

 and, by their features, evidently hybrids between them. They were 

 curiously connective of the two species. Three or four much 

 resembled the plate dclxxxv. of Eng. Bot. ed. 3, representing C. 

 nutanti-crispus ; others had more of the characters of C. nutans, 

 being of stouter habit, with larger anthodes, and longer spines to 

 the stems and leaves. The field in which they grew might have 

 been called a "thistlery," for Cnicus lanceolatus Hoffm., C. j)a^lustris 

 Hoffm., and C. arvensis Hoffm. occurred there with those already 

 mentioned. The field is situ ited in Dist, IV. (Plym) of ' Flora of 

 Plymouth,' and over a couple of miles from the spot therein men- 

 tioned as having produced in 1871 another set of what were very 

 similar plants. I have no doubt these had a like hybrid origin. 

 I find in the Bot. Exchange Club Report for 1888, just received, men- 

 tion of a supposed hybrid between C. nutans and C. crispus sent from a 

 •'Hedge, Sellack, Herefordshire, Sept. 1888," by the Rev. Augustin 

 Ley. It is commented on as very near crispus, and the compara- 

 tively late date when it was collected must make the specimen or 

 specimens more or less unsatisfactory ; for specimens of thistles, as 

 well as of burdocks, collected in the autumn are almost certain to 

 be shoots that have sprouted from roots which have had the 



