NARROW PRICKLY-TOOTHED BUCKLER FERN 53 



than the foregoing. The scales of the stipes are blunt 

 and whole-coloured, and the caudex creeps. 



Lastrea dilatata spreads more, and has broader or 

 ovate lance-shaped fronds. The stipes is clothed with 

 lance-shaped scales, darker-coloured in the centre than 

 at the margins. The caudex is erect. 



Lastrea amula is spreading, evergreen, and has 

 fronds smaller than those of dilatata, triangular, bi- 

 pinnate, the lobes having their edges curved back so as 

 to present a hollow upper surface. The scales are 

 narrow, pointed, and jagged ; and the caudex is erect. 



The Narrow Prickly-Toothed Buckler Fern L. 

 SPINULOSA (sometimes spinosa) has a stout stem, or 

 caudex, either decumbent or slowly creeping horizon- 

 tally, with the fronds growing erect from its apex ; the 

 fronds branched, sometimes tufted, slightly scaly, 

 formed of the enlarged and enduring bases of the de- 

 cayed fronds, surrounding a woody axis, the scales 

 resembling those of the stipes. The fronds are from a 

 foot to three or four feet high, bipinnate, the pinnse 

 obliquely tapering, the inferior pinnules being larger 

 than the superior. This is most obvious at the base of 

 the frond, where the pinnse are broader than they are 

 toward the apex. The lower pinnules on the basal 

 pinnse are oblong, narrowing upwards, the margins 

 deeply cut, the lobes being serrated, and the teeth 

 somewhat spinulose ; those toward the apex of each 

 pinna, as well as the basal ones of the pinnse nearer 

 the apex of the frond, become gradually less and less 

 compound, so that, although the margins are still fur- 

 nished with spinulose teeth, they gradually lose the 

 B 3 



