162 UAVALLIA. 



Involucres elongated more or less, between membranous and cO' 

 riaceous, approaching to semicylindrical, urceolate or cuneate, 

 the sides as well as the base confluent with the frond, the apex 

 only free and usually truncated. — Chiefly E. Indian and Ma- 

 layan Fems. Caude.v long, creeping, stout, scaly. Fronds 

 coriaceous, frequently ample, ternati-pinnate or compoundly 

 pinnate, the pinnae more or less pinnatifld, the segments gene- 

 rally more or less attenuated {not dilated upwards) Hook. 

 Gen. Fi I.. TAB 27. DuviiWi^L, J. Sm. in part. Stenolobus, 

 Pr. awr/" Davallia, § 3. Colposoria, in part, and § 4. Odontoso- 

 ria, in part, Pr. 

 Obs. This group has its representative in D. Canariensis, Sm., which I 

 consider to be the type of that author's genus DavaUia. It is a natural 

 assemblage, including species of great beauty ; mostly bearing ample, coria- 

 ceous, glossy fronds, with coriaceous involucres, which in general may be 

 described as half tubular, the sides as well as the base being incorporated 

 with the frond, and in that respect approaching the previous subgenus, 

 Prosaplia ; but differing from it in habit and in the texture of the invo- 

 lucre and in the presence of the long scaly creeping caudex. Some of the 

 present group, with the most elongated involucres, Professor Presl has dis- 

 tinguished as a genus, by the name of St^nolobu.i, and, misled, perhaps, by 

 Schkuhr's figure of D. solida (the type of this genus), he has described the 

 stalks of the capsules as arising from a slender filiform receptacle, which 

 as Mr. J. Smith has justly observed, is by no means the case : and 

 the species of the genus in question have nothing to distinguish them even 

 as a section from these true DavaUia;. jMr. J. Smith, on the other hand, 

 has united with them the species of the section " Odontosoria" of Presl, 

 which, as it appears, are fully entitled by character and habit to be kept 

 separate from them. The difficulty of discriminating several of the species 

 of this group, it must be confessed, is very great; for the pinna;, or seg- 

 ments, often vary much in form in different parts of the same plant; and 

 even figures are scarcely sufficiently characteristic, except they are upon a 

 large scale. 



* Fronds small, ternate or quinate. 

 28. D. triphyllay Hook. ; caudex stout creeping covered 

 with chaffy scales, fronds coriaceous small ternate, pinnae ob- 

 long-lanceolate obtuse cmieate at the base in fertile plants 

 more elongated all of them entire, intermediate ones petiolate, 

 lateral ones shorter sessile oblique at the base, veins hori- 

 zontally patent copious crowded parallel forked thickened 

 flat (not prominent), involucres semicylindrical compressed 

 crowded so as to form an uninterrupted marginal line the 

 whole length of the pinna?. (Tab. XLVI. A.) — Stenolobus 

 pentaphyllus, J. Sm. En. Fil. Philipp. I. c. {not DavalUa 

 pentaphylla, Bl.) 



Hal). Sincapnre, Cuming, n. 366. — A beautiful species, which is cer- 

 tainly distinct from the D. pentaphylla of Blume, to which ]Mr. J. Smith 

 had referred it ; for that has a quinate or rather quinato-pinnate frond, with 

 the sterile frond distinctly serrated : whereas our plant has not, so far as I 

 have seen, more than three pinna;, and the sterile fronds equally entire with 



