﻿602 Gilbert : Revision of the Bermuda Ferns 



POLYPODIUM PECTIN ATUM L. 



Hemsley is the only authority for this species. He gives 

 Walsingham as a habitat, but no special locality. I did not find 

 it, but as it is one of the common ferns of the West Indies I have 

 no doubt it grows in Bermuda. Its superficial appearance is so 

 much like that of P. Plu mulct that it would not be strange if Gov- 

 ernor Lefroy mistook it for that species. 



ACROSTICHUM AUREUM L. 



All 



abundant in brackish marshes, 



but everybody formerly took it for granted that all the plants of 

 this genus growing in Bermuda were of one species. In the 

 marshes on the south shore they do not attain the great size of the 

 plants in the Devonshire marsh, and I feel certain that the former 

 belong to A. aureum, as they grow in salt or very brackish water, 

 which is the favorite habitat of aureum. I did not collect it there, 

 or make any close examination of the species at the time, suppos- 

 ing, like everybody else, that the plants in both localities be- 

 longed to the same species. 



Acrostichum lomarioides Jenman. 

 This is the species recently separated by Jenman from the 

 familiar A. aureum. It is characterized, he states, by " its much 

 larger size, numerous crowded fronds, the barren and fertile 

 being uniformly separate — all the pinnae of the one being barren 

 and all of the other fertile — much more sessile leaflets (turned 

 transversely with the rachis, the plane to the sky like the blades of 

 a step-ladder), intestiniform translucent pale-colored corpuscles 

 covering the sporangia, which give a pale pruinose color to the 

 soriferous under surfaces." I might add that the meshes of vena- 



ft 



tion are much finer and point more directly to the edge, and that 

 the costal areoles, instead of lying lengthwise along the midrib, 

 are generally longer the other way and point outward. The vena- 

 tion is raised on the under side and is more distinct than it is in A. 

 aureum, looking like honey-comb, as if it were made of whitish-yel- 

 low wax, while in A. aureum it is of the same color as the rest o( 

 the frond, or darker. 



The specimens are very stiff and difficult to press on account 



