366 NOTES ON NEW ZEALAND FERNS. 



scales on them, vary from medium brown to almost jet-black in 

 different ijlants, and the shape of the fronds is broadly lanceolate, 

 about two or three pairs of pinnae only inclining downwards, rather 

 than oblong-deltoid. The general colour of the frond, too, is 

 yellowish green, while that of I), fibrosa is bluish green. In both 

 the under surface has a greyer tinge than the upper one. I), fibrosa 

 is said occasionally to reach twenty feet in height, though I have 

 never seen one even fifteen feet high. In this fern the actual 

 caudex is thin, not more than one inch and a half to two inches in 

 diameter, yet it appears to be often fifteen or eighteen inches in 

 diameter, owmg to its being covered wdth a thick coating of long, 

 nearly black, scales, interlaced and matted together, as if felted, 

 so as to form a substance varying in harshness from sheep's-wool 

 to cocoa-nut fibre. There is none of the true fibrous weki on this 

 fern, but its sides are often adzed off by the Maoris, so that its 

 caudex is reduced to a slab about two and a half or three inches 

 thick, which is used in the same w^ay as weki. The scales on the 

 stipes and rachises are purplish black, the fronds lanceolate, the 

 broadest part being above the centre, and the stipes and rachises 

 yellowish brown, but lighter below than above. Fully half the 

 pinnse incline dow^nw^ards. D. lanata has the second pau' of pinnae 

 the longest, though the first (which alone incline downwards) are 

 very little shorter, and the breadth of the frond is fully two-thirds 

 of its length. The stipes is densely clothed with soft bright brown 

 hairy scales, and the rachis, though smoother and of a brownish 

 green below, has an upper surface like dark brown velvet. The 

 colour of the frond generally is bright yellowish green. 



As regards the Hijinenoplujlla, I note that H. Cheesemannii occurs 

 throughout at any rate the north island of New Zealand, and not 

 merely at Titirangi. In H. subtiUssimum the hah's are bristly 

 rather than silky, and grow in clusters. H. javanicum has often a 

 straight flat wing along the stipes and rachis, the crisping being 

 confined to the other ]3arts of the frond. H. demissum passes into 

 H. fiabellatum, so that no one can tell where one ends and the 

 other begins, though their extreme forms differ so widely. H. 

 scabrum often has its surface velvety rather than glabrous. H. clila- 

 tatum produces fronds sometimes three feet long, and those of 

 H. puklicrrimum often measure two and a half feet. The ordinary 

 form of the latter fern creeps so slightly that it is generally 

 regarded as a tufted plant, though I am told that at Taranaki a 

 more widely creeping type is occasionally met with. H. bivalve 

 can always be identified at once by its weeping habit of growth, a 

 result probably of the terminal position of its son, and of their 

 large size. 



Trichomanes LyalUi grows at the Thames gold-fields and Welling- 

 ton, as well as on the south-west coast of the middle island, and 

 is, therefore, probably distributed throughout the colony. T. venosum 

 varies greatly in its lobing, sometimes having beautifully regular 

 palmate or flabelliform pinnae, and at others having some lobes 

 five or six times as long as the rest. T. huinile again grows very 

 irregularly. As a rule it has no regular rachis or pinnae, but 



