592 Underwood: American ferns 



around the world to Sierra Leone and Mauritius, thence to India, 

 Java, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Samoa, each with dis- 

 tinctive characters and each with a well-defined geographic range, 

 how is one to know how to refer definitely to any particular group 

 of this series, for example the one figured in this paper (figures 

 1-3) which has a very limited distribution in eastern Cuba, together 

 with a very pronounced type of leaf that no one would possibly 

 mistake for any other ? Or how shall we refer to another very 

 definite plant of the lowlands of Florida and Cuba which we have 

 recently seen fit to describe as Stenochlaena Kunzeana * and 

 which is figured in this paper (figures 4-6) ? It is true they 

 could be referred to as varieties of Stenochlaena sorbifolia ; so 

 could our species of soft maples be referred to as varieties of the 

 sugar maple, but I believe none of our so-called conservatives has 

 thought of such a course, even though the foliage of the maples is 

 really much closer than the two plants in question. Besides, we 

 do not know which is the parent stock and which is the varia- 

 tion, or better we do know that both have diverged from a common 

 ancestor in the past so that neither one could with accuracy be 

 said to be a variety of the other. Being distinct recognizable 

 entities, we prefer to call these units of classification species, the 



same as we do our well recognized species of maples and other 

 plants of a similar sort. 



Linnaeus founded Acrostichum sorbifolium on two things that 

 turn out to be distinct. One was a plant figured by Plumier from 

 Martinique (afterwards copied by Petiver), and the other was a 

 plant figured by Sloane from Jamaica. The acquisition of the ex- 

 tensive herbarium of Pere Duss from the islands of Martinique and 



*We are gravely informed by the confident editor of the Fern Bulletin (14 : 95) 

 that this species is Lomaria procera ! and that " the [Florida] plant reported by A. A. 

 Eaton as Acrostichum sorbifolium is also omitted " [*. e.\ in the last number of this 

 series of papers]. Lomaria procera was originally described from New Zealand and 

 like its congeners of the mountain regions of the West Indies is a terrestrial fern grow- 

 ing in a crown after the manner of our native Christmas fern, and like other species of 

 Lomaria possesses a distinct linear intramarginal sorus covered by an indusium ; while 

 Stenochlaena Kunzeana, originally designated (but not described) byPresl seventyyears 

 ago from the lowlands of Cuba, is a climbing fern with scattered leaves, creeps up the 

 trunks of trees three or four meters, and like other members of its genus possesses no 

 indusium and not even a definite sorus. Mere details (?) of structure, habit, geographic 

 and altitudinal distribution like these, seem to amount to nothing in the mind of the 

 editor of "the only fern magazine in the world." 



