FILICES. 73 



This plant cannot well be confounded with any British Fern, except 

 L. uliginosa. The differences will be mentioned hereafter. Strangely 

 enough, L. Filix-mas was figured in the original edition of ' English 

 Botany,' No. 1949, for it. Smith says Mr. Sowerby was deceived by 

 a wrong specimen sent from the Isle of Wight, but that Filix-mas was 

 never mistaken for cristata by him. I have long had the plant in 

 cultivation from Edgefield and Bawsey Heath, sent me by the Rev. 

 Kirby Trimmer ; it is much less vigorous than L. uliginosa and spinu- 

 losa growing beside it. 



Crested Shield-fern. 



SPECIES VII.-L ASTREA ULIGINOSA. Newman. 



Plate 1854. 



Babenh. Crypt. Vase. Europ. Exsicc. No. 19. Newm. Phyt. 1849, p. 678. 



L. cristata, var. (3. uliginosa, Moore, Phyt. 1851, p. 149 ; and Nat. Print. Brit. Ferns, 



8vo. ed. Vol. I. p. 210. Bab. Mail. Brit. Bot. ed. vii. p. 447. Hook. & Am. Brit. 



Fl. ed. viii. p. 585. 

 Ncphrodium cristatum, (3. uliginosum, Hook. fil. Stud. Fl. p. 465. Hook. & Bak. Syn. 



Fil. ed. ii. p. 273. 

 Aspidium cristatum, var. uliginosum, Milde, Fil. Europ. p. 130. 

 A. spinulosum x cristatum, Milde, Verhandl. der Schles. Gesellsch. 1855, p. 64; and 



Nov. Act. 1858, p. 532. Basel, in Bot. Zeit. 1856, p. 435, teste Milde. Babenh. 



I.e. No. 19. 

 Lophodium uliginosum, Newm. Phyt. 1851, p. 371 ; and App. XIX. Hist. Brit. Ferns, 



ed. iii. p. 163. 



Caudex short (or elongate when growing in bogs ?), rather thick, 

 separating into numerous rather small divisions or crowns, which are 

 moderately thick, short, and closely packed together (probably more 

 elongate and creeping when growing in moist bogs ?), covered by the 

 imbricated bases of former fronds. Fronds of two kinds, several 

 produced close together round the extremity of each division or 

 crown, deciduous. Fertile fronds stiffly erect. Stipes rather long 

 (^ to nearly 1 the length of the lamina), stout, deeply channelled on' 

 the anterior face, containing 5 vascular bundles, without glands, 

 more or less sparsely clothed with broadly-ovate cuspidate concave 

 entire very pale brown subpersistent scales. Lamina firm, deep 

 yellowish-green, glabrous and without glands, strapshaped, tapering 

 gradually to the apex, abrupt at the base, pinnate ; lowest pair of 

 pinnse deltoid-triangular, with the basal pinnules nearly equally long 

 both above and below, about as long as the succeeding pair, the 

 others becoming gradually longer and narrower till about the middle 



VOL. XII. L 



