ICONES FILICUM SINICARUM 
PLATE 129 
POLYSTICHUM FIMBRIATUM Christ 
POLYPODIACEZ 
POLYSTICHUM FIMBRIATUM Christ, Bull. Acad. Géogr. Bot. (1906) 237; C. Chr. Ind. 
Fil. I. 64 (1912). 
Rhizome thick, erect, clothed in a dense tuft of shining brown linear- 
subulate scales over 2 cm long; fronds caespitose, stipe 15-18 cm long, thick, densely 
clothed in large, ovate-acuminate, spread or deflexed, rufo-brown scales, lamina 
lanceolate, to 30 cm long, 5-6 cm broad, base truncate, apex short-acuminate, 
pinnate; pinne 25-36-jugate, alternate, imbricate, very shortly petiolate, basal 
ones as long as those above, 2.5-3 cm long, 1.8 cm broad, oblong-falcate, blunt, 
base deltoidly auricled above (auricle sometimes free in the lower pinne), cuneate 
below, with truncate upper inner edge parallel to, or imbricating on, the rachis, 
margin subentire with aristate teeth all around, rachis and underside of lamina. 
copiously fibrillosely scaly; texture thick coriaceous; veins prominent underneath, 
pinnate in auricles and triforked upwards; sori rounded, uniseriate, nearer to 
the margin than to the costa, terminating the anterior basal veinlet of each 
group, indusium thick, brown, entire, rounded, peltately attached. 
Kweichow: South of Tin-fan, Cavalerie and Fortunat 1842 (type), Oct. 1904; 
Ping-chow, Y. Tsiang 7134, Sept. 14. 1930. 
This species represented so far only by two collections from the southern 
part of Kweichow, proves to be so remarkably distinct that there is no known 
Chinese species to which it can be closely compared. It belongs to the group of 
P. nepalense (Spreng) from which it differs altogether in densely scaly stipe and 
rachis, in entire and aristately serrate pinne with blunt apices and without 
cartilaginous teeth and the characteristically ovate-cuspidate appressed scales on 
the underside of pinne and in supramedial sori with coriaceous and much smal- 
ler indusia. In the gross habit, our fern appears related to Cyrtomium nephrole- 
pioides Christ from the same region, but differs in its free venation, oblong-falcate 
pinne with unequal auricled base and different scale characters. 
Plate 129. Fig. 1. Habit sketch (natural size). 2. Pinna (x 2). 3a-b. Scales from stipe (x 10). 
4. Scale from rachis (x 12). 
