NOTES ON NEW ZEALAND FERNS. 367 



divides several times dichotomously, so as to produce a sort of 

 zigzag rachis along one side of the frond, whicli thus becomes 

 lopsidedly triangular, and widest near the upper end, or perhaps I 

 should rather say lower one, as the plant always grows on steep 

 faces, with its fronds hanging downwards. T. Colensoi grows in a 

 similar pendulous manner, but truly pinnated. 



As regards Darallia, we have two common forms here, though 

 I cannot clearly make out from the description if either of them is 

 D. Forsteri. One has a widely creeping habit, from its very fii'st 

 appearance as a seedling, and sends up solitary fronds at distant 

 intervals from the rhizome. The stipes is short, and the frond 

 ovate-lanceolate, the low^est pinnae being nearly or quite as long as 

 any, and all curving upwards. The whole texture of the frond is 

 very why, and the stipes and rachis are glossy reddish brown. The 

 sori are very adiantoid in appearance, but I coidd not say that any 

 of them w^ere terminal, unless just at the apices of the pinnae, 

 where the point of the segment projects scarcely if at all beyond 

 them. This plant seldom if ever exceeds eighteen inches high. 

 The other is a larger x^lant, sometimes two and a half feet high, 

 and with broader thinner foliage. It is not truly tufted, and yet 

 creejDS so slightly as to look almost so. Plants which I have had 

 growing for the last four years, and which must have been several 

 years old when I got them, have not yet spread to the sides of a 

 six-inch flower-pot, and have in that space as many as from thirty 

 to forty fronds, growing to a length of from twelve to fifteen 

 inches. The stipes are yellowish green, and longer than those of 

 the cree^Ding sort, and the fronds are rhomboidal, the length one 

 and a half times the breadth, and the lowest pair of pinnae often 

 incline downwards, while the rest grow out at right angles, or 

 nearly so, with the rachis. A plant thus forms a most beautiful 

 mass of foliage. We have an arborescent DavalUa, if not 

 a tufted one also, towards the head of om- river, but I have only a 

 sohtary dried specimen of the former, and cannot get more at 

 present, owing to the Maoris having shut up the country where it 

 grows to prevent peox^le prospecting for gold. It has harsher and 

 more wiry foliage than the creeping plant, with a coppery tinge, 

 and very adiantoid involucres. In all our Davallias the sorus 

 grows rather on the larger side of a segment, which curls partially 

 around it, and then sticks out like a claw, the whole presenting an 

 appearance very similar to that of a dog's toe. Lindsaya linearis 

 has distinct barren and fertile fronds, the former having far larger 

 thinner pinnae, and growing earlier in the spring than the others, 

 as appears to be invariably the case -where ferns have both sorts of 

 fronds. On steep faces and hill sides L. trichomanoides produces 

 pendent fronds often eighteen inches long by not more than two 

 and a half or three inches broad. 



All our Adianta have short, thick, creeping rhizomes, except 

 A. diaphanum, which has fibrous roots furnished with little bulb- 

 shaped tubers. A. affine is often two feet high or more, and the 

 pinnules, which are bluish green, are very large, particularly in 

 young plants. A. fidcwn grows fully two and a half feet high, 



