284 PLATYCERIUM. 



3. P. yrande, J. Sra. ; fronds ample bifarious eventually 

 glabrous ; sterile ones imbricated suborbicular below convex 

 and irregularly sinuato-lobate elongated dilated upwards, 

 deeply and mucb laciniated or subdichotomously pinnatifid 

 with patent and subinflexed segments ; fertile ones geminate 

 very large broadly cuneate bipartite suddenly narrowed at 

 the base, the disk soriferous and not produced beyond the 

 sinus, each partition or primary segment of the frond elon- 

 gated several times dichotomously divided, segments very 

 long loriform, ultimate ones obtuse, venation as in the pre- 

 ceding species but with broader areoles and the free branched 

 included veinlets more frequent, soriferous mass solitary on 

 each frond often very large transversely reniformi-ovoid dark- 

 brown. — /. Sm. in Hook. Joirrn. Bnt. iii. /;. 402. Pr. Hook. 

 Fit. Exot. t. 86. Acrostichum grande, AU. Ciinn. hi Herb, 

 nostr. P. biforme, H^ook. Gen. Fit. t. 80. B. {not Bl.). Neu- 

 roplatyceros grandis, Fee, Acrost. p. 103. 



Hab. Singapore, Wallich, 1823. Luzon, Cuming, n. 56. North-east Aus- 

 tralia, All. Cunningham (1829), Fraser. — It is only of late years that we have 

 received such specimens of the several species of this magnificent genus, and 

 that the species have been so successfully cultivated in our Ferneries, as to enable 

 us to identify them. I am now satisfied that Dr. ^Yallich was the first to detect, 

 but not to name, the present one, whose fronds have been found to be 5-6 feet 

 long. The soriferous mass on one of our specimens measures 6 inches in length 

 and 10 in breadth ; it is solitary on each of the fronds and formed in the primary 

 sinus of the frond. 



4. P. TVallichii, Hook. ; fronds ample bifarious at length 

 glabrous ; sterile ones imbricated below irregularly sinuato- 

 lobate above elongated dilated deeply and much . dichoto- 

 mously pinnatifid, segments patenti-inflexed; /er/z/e fronds 

 geminate very broadly flabellato-cuneate twice-dichotomous 

 suddenly narrowed at the base, each pi'imary division or seg- 

 ment bears a sorus on the disk (hence there are two sori on 

 each frond) which is semicircular and very much produced 

 in the sinus itself, the terminal segments beyond the sori- 

 ferous disk are several times dichotomous and pendent, 

 venation as in P. p'ande. — Hook, in Gard. Chron. for Oct. 

 1858. ji. 765, and in Fit. Exot. t. 97- Acrostichum alci- 

 corne. Wall. Cat. n. 19 {not Linn.). 



Hab. Malay Peninsula, on trees : banks of the Irawaddy and of the river 

 Martaban, Wallich, 1826 and 7, Griffith; Moulmeine, ParzA/t. — In many respects 

 allied to P. hiforme, where, however, the soriferous disk is an unchanged portion 

 of the frond, as to its appearance on the upper side ; in P. Wallichii its presence 

 is indicated in an altered appearance of the upper side of the frond, and it is 

 protruded, if I may use the expression, so as to be scutiform (forming a semicircle 



