A new Asplenium from Mexico * 
WILLIAM R. MAXxoNn 
For nearly twenty years the specimen described below has lain 
among the undetermined material of Asfl/enium in the United 
States National Herbarium. Recent studies in this genus have 
failed to discover any species to which it may be referred, and the 
writer has come to the conclusion that it 
represents a species hitherto unnoticed. It 
may be known as: 
Asplenium modestum sp. nov. 
Fronds 5, about 8 cm. high, borne from a 
stoutish suberect rhizome: stipes 0.5—2.3 cm. 
long, naked, greenish, sulcate: laminae 4.5~6 
em. long by 1.5 cm. broad, somewhat cori- 
aceous, oblong-lanceolate, with six to eight 
pairs of subopposite to alternate, distant to 
close-set, short-stalked pinnae ; pinnae ovate- 
deltoid to irregularly rectangular, broadly ex- 
cised below, the lowermost pinnately parted 
into three cuneate lobes (the superior, and in 
some cases the inferior, quite free), which in 
turn are deeply and sharply cleft, the margins 
thus coarsely and unequally fimbriate ; succeed 
ing pinnae less deeply parted, commonly only 
the superior lobe free; venation obscure, nye ites 
flabellate-pinnate : sori rather short, two . db 
Splenium modese 
three to each lobe; indusia suberose, sactalhe ROE REE 
concealed by the mature sporangia. 
Founded upon a single sheet, 70. 27674, in the United States 
National Herbarium, collected in southwestern Chihuahua, 
Mexico, August to November, 1885, by Dr. Edward Palmer (xo. 
z62). The type sheet bears two plants, one fully mature which 
may stand as the type, and a second plant which though very 
young is without doubt the same. 
* Published by permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 
657 
