FILICES. 131 



SPECIES VL-ASPLENIUM TRICHOMANES. Linn. 



Plate 1878. 

 Babenh. Crypt. Vase. Europ. Exsicc. No. 25. 



Caudex short, tufted, dividing into several scaly crowns ; scales 

 linear-lanceolate, entire, tapering into short setaceous points, usually 

 with a dark central stripe. Fronds several from each crown, spread- 

 ing or ascending. Stipes slender, wiry, usually very short, and 

 hardly ever more than one-sixth the length of the lamina, purplish- 

 brown throughout, with scattered hair-like deciduous brown scales. 

 Lamina thick, coriaceous or subcoriaceous, opaque, glabrous above, 

 but sometimes with a few deciduous gland-tipped hair-like scales 

 beneath, dim, evergreen, linear or more rarely strapshaped-linear, 

 tapering slightly towards the base and apex, pinnate ; lowest pair 

 of pinnae smaller than the succeeding pair, subsessile, spreading, subor- 

 bicular or deltoid-suborbicular, truncate or inversely-deltoid at the 

 base, obtuse, repand or crenate or rarely incised ; middle pinnae longer 

 than the basal ones, roundish-oval oval or oblong, rarely oblong- 

 strapshaped, truncate or inversely deltoid or wedgeshaped at the 

 base ; terminal pinnae smaller ; all distinct or two or three of them con- 

 fluent with the terminal lobe of the frond, deciduous and falling 1 

 off from the rachis when mature. Rachis purplish-brown with a 

 narrow brown wing on each side, and having notches in which 

 the pinnae are inserted, at first with a few hair-like scales, ulti- 

 mately glabrous. Pinnae with a flexuous mid-vein, giving off once- 

 forked branches running to the crenatures and nearly reaching the 

 margin. Sori oblong-linear, attached to the anterior branch of the 

 venules beyond their forks and equidistant from the midrib and the 

 margins of the pinnae, often ultimately confluent. Indusium entire 

 or repand, rarely crenulated. Spores muricated, with numerous small 

 acute tubercles. 



Var. a. genuinum. 



Middle pinnae roundish-oval or oval-oblong, mostly equal at the 

 base, repand or crenate. Rachis rounded beneath. 



Var. /3. anceps. Soland. 



Lowe, Primit. Fl. et Faun. Madeir. p. 8. 



Middle pinnae oblong or oblong-strapshaped, auriculate above, 

 crenate-serrate. Rachis more prominent beneath than in var. a. 



s 2 



