﻿Maxon: Polypodium marginellum and its allies 223 



4. Polypodium nigrolimbatum Jenman, Bull. Bot. Dept. 



Jamaica 11. 4: 69. 1897 

 Grammitis fluminensis Fee, Crypt. Vase. Bres. 85. 1869. Not 



Polypodium fluminense Veil. Fl. Flum. 11: pi. 66. 1827; Mus. 



Nac. Rio Janeiro 5: 447. 1881. 



Type locality: Jamaica. 



Distribution: Blue Mountains, Jamaica, at 1,500 to 1,800 

 meters elevation; also in Brazil, British Guiana, and Bolivia, 

 ascending to 2,600 meters. 



Illustration: Fee, op. cit. pi ig,f. 3 (as Grammitis flumi- 



Jenman in writing of the ferns of Jamaica well distinguished 

 this species from P. marginellum, its only near relative in Jamaica, 

 but erroneously cited Grammitis limhata F^e as a synonym. The 

 fronds are numerous, fasciculate, acute, and rigidly coriaceous, 

 and narrower and more stiffly erect than in P. marginellum, which, 

 though widely different in venation and minute characters, it 

 somewhat resembles otherwise. The continental specimens are 

 often larger than the Jamaican, but seem no different in other 

 respects. Fee's species, Grammitis fluminensis, is apparently the 

 same, judging by a fragment of the type collection in the Under- • 

 wood Herbarium, but the specimen figured by him is certainly 

 atypical in having obtuse apices. 



The largest and most perfect Jamaican material studied is 

 that collected by the writer from mossy tree trunks on the upper 

 forested slopes of Monkey Hill (above New Haven Gap), altitude 

 about 1,800 meters, June 22, 1904 {Maxon 2724, 274S). 



5. Polypodium Hessii Maxon, sp. nov. 

 Plants epiphytic, 8-14 cm. high, the fronds few, ascending, 

 subfasciculate. Rhizome decumbent or short-creeping, 1-1.5 

 cm. long, 2-3 mm. thick, sparingly radicose beneath, the small 

 apical portion slightly exposed, inconspicuously paleaceous; 

 scales dark reddish brown, rigidly acicular, subfalcate, subflexuous 

 toward the tip, 2-4 mm. long, 0.2-0.3 mm. broad, the cell walls 

 richly colored; stipe slender, about i cm. long, brownish, alate, 

 passing gradually into the lamina, deciduously pubescent with 

 minute branched glandular hairs; lamina 7-13 cm. long, 5-9 mm. 

 broad, linear, narrowly attenuate in the basal third, a little more 



