394 BENEDICT: REVISION OF THE GENUS VITTARIA 
(Type species Pteris scolopendrina Bory) 
Taeniopteris Hooker, Gen. Fil. pl. 76 B. 1842. 
[Type species Vittaria Forbsei Fée = V. scolopendrina (Bory) 
Thwaites} 
Taeniopsis J. Smith, Jour. Bot. 4: 67. 1841. 
(Type species V. lineata [L.] J. E. Smith) 
Ferns usually of epiphytic habit and of comparatively small 
dimensions, of herbaceous texture and entirely without sclerenchy- 
matous tissue; stem slender, creeping, clothed with clathrate 
scales, the vascular tissue in the form of a tube (siphonostele) or a 
simple net (dictyostele); the phyllotaxy distichous or radial; 
leaves usually few, linear to linear-elliptic, usually grass-like in 
outline, the epidermis with scattered linear cystoliths, the leaf- 
trace single or double, the venation consisting of a midvein with 
pinnate branches which anastomose anteriorly to form a row of 
simple areolae along each side of the midvein; sporangia in two 
indeterminate submarginal or sometimes practically marginal 
lines along two continuous receptacles formed by the outer 
portions of the veinlets, the receptacle usually in a groove often 
of considerable depth and sometimes with the edges produced so 
as to serve as an indusium; a true indusium wanting; spores 
diplanate or triplanate; paraphyses usually present, consisting 
of large reddish or yellowish cells borne on simple or branching 
pedicels. 
The generic name Vittaria is fortunately well established. It 
was based originally on a single species, Pteris lineata L., so that 
there is no difficulty as to its typification, notwithstanding the 
fact that by several writers another species has been recognized 
as type. Pteris lineata has even been made the type of another 
genus, Taeniopsis J. Smith. Smith based his division of Vittaria 
on the position of the sporangial line, including in Euvittaria the 
species of the type of V. elongata Sw., in which the fruiting line 
is practically marginal, the leaf margin being double and including 
the sporangia between the two lips. This type, however, a5 
Luerssen has shown, is not generically different from that of V. 
lineata, in which the lines of sporangia are clearly submarginal 
and dorsal. The extremes of the two types are connected by all 
possible intermediate forms among the various species. 
Haplopteris Presl was based on the largest species in the genus, 
