FILICES. 95 



SPECIES III.— POL YST I CHUM ANGULARE. Presl 



Plate 1861. 



Aspidium angulare, Willd. 8m. Eng. Fl. Vol. IV. p. 291. Book. & Am. Brit. Fl. ed. 



viii. p. 583. Hook.fil. Stud. Fl. p. 465. 

 A. aculeatum, Milde, Fil. Europ. p. 106. 

 A. aculeatum, var. angulare, Gren. & Godr. Fl. de Fr. Vol. III. p. 630. Rook. & Bah. 



Syn. Fil. ed. ii. p. 252. 

 Polypodium aculeatum, Huds. Fl. Angl. p. 459. 

 " P. setiferum, Forsh Fl. ^Egypt. Arab. p. 185 " (teste Moore). 



Caudex short or elongated, very thick, decumbent or erect, 

 breaking into several crowns after a few years. Fronds very 

 numerous, all similar, arranged in shuttlecock fashion, ascending, 

 sub-evergreen. Stipes short or rather short, very thickly clothed with 

 large triangular-ovate erose-denticulate ferruginous scales, inter- 

 mingled with numerous hair-like ones, and very numerous small 

 whitish scurf-like scales. Lamina firm, but not coriaceous, flaccid, 

 bright green, scarcely shining, much paler beneath, narrowly 

 elliptical-oblong or oblong-strapshaped, tapering at the apex, abrupt 

 at the base, bipinnate or tripinnate ; rachis thickly clothed towards 

 the base with lanceolate scales, and for about half-way up with 

 whitish fimbriated scurf-scales, and for its whole length with very 

 numerous reddish-brown hair-like scales, most of which are persistent ; 

 pinnae very shortly stalked, pinnate or bipinnate, strapshaped, acute, 

 the lower ones similar to the others, and not much shorter than the 

 succeeding pair ; pinnules ovate and falcate, rarely rhomboidal, 

 commonly auricled at the base on the anterior side, with the basal 

 angle by which they are attached commonly greater than a right 

 angle, most of them distinctly stalked, inciso-spinous-serrate or 

 doubly-serrate or pinnatifid or even pinnate ; serratures prolonged 

 into weak spines. Ultimate veins scarcely impressed on the upper, 

 surface, but very deeply so beneath, running from the mid-vein of the 

 pinnae, auricles and larger lobes, giving off one or two branches 

 which run to the base of the teeth, the first anterior branch usually 

 to the notch between the teeth. Sori occupying the upper half or 

 two-thirds of the frond, attached to the first anterior branch of the 

 ultimate veins, and forming a line on each side of the mid-vein of the 

 pinnule, nearer the mid-vein and the margin, with a loop at the base 

 extending into the auricle, then (in luxurious plants) sometimes with 

 a few sori between the principal line and the margin on the anterior 



