THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA, 465 



-mr. amntliophijllim (sp. Frauchet) of A. aculmhm, which — opposing Baker, 

 "who in his Summaiy of Kew Ferns accepts it as a species— he sets up in the 

 Sup]Dlement to his Handbook. 



In the *' Synopsis Fdicum " this fem is characterised as " quite doubtfully 

 distinct from some of the forms of auriculatum and amileaium.^'' I know no 

 fovm. oi A, miriculatum which A. ilicifolium in the least resembles; and it 

 certainly is very different from the three species I have above separated from 

 it ; and Mr. Clarke suggests no resemblance to any of these, though he says 

 there are intermediates between A. ilicifolium and A. aculeatum, which no one 

 up to the time when he wrote had ventured to name. There is no doubt a 

 great resemblance to A. rufo-barbatmn Wall, in the cutting (of segments, not of 

 frond) and texture of A. ilicifolium, and since Mr. Clarke wrote M. Franchet 

 has " rushed in " and named a Cliinese plant A, acantliophjllum. On seeing 

 the scrap of this in Kew I adopted this name for a somewhat common N.-W. 

 Himalayan plant, to which I had been giving the vai-iety names of contortum, 

 and, afterwards, pseud-iUdfoliim. Holding to my present scheme of admitting 

 no varieties in ferns except cultural ones, and not being able to see that any 

 one of these three ferns is a mere form of another of them, I keep tliem sepa- 

 rate as species ; and I would describe A. ilicifolium as follows : — 



" St. tufted, often densely so, 2—9 ins. long, slender, clothed some- 

 tunes sparsely with large broad scales, mixed sometimes with fibrils ; 

 fr. 6 — 10 ins. long | in. to ^ in. broad ; pinncc subdeltoid or 

 broadly lanceolate, A— I in- long, apex mucronate, with a large 

 mucronate auricle below generally nearly, and sometimes quite, free 

 in large specimens, and several mucronate lobes above, pinnae becom- 

 ing very distant and rather smaller towards the base of frond ; texture 

 very coriaceous ; both surfaces naked, except for a few scales on the 

 underside of the costa ; rhachis slender, clothed with narrow hair- 

 pointed scales ; veins immersed— best visible on upper side, forked 

 once or twice in the lobes ; son one in each lobe, and in two rows in 

 the amicle, large m proportion to the size of the segments. " 

 Blanford was sceptical as to the claim of this fern to specific rank, and 

 considered it an alpine form of A. cwuleatum, graduating into A. rufo-harlatum ; 

 but he evidently included A. manthophyllum, 



8. A. acanthophyllum Fi-anchet, in Bull. Bot. Soc. France 1885, 

 28 ; Baker in Summary of New Ferns, Ann. Bot., Vol. V., No. xviii. 

 .Polystichum aculeatum, var. acantlioplujllum (Franchet), Bedd. Suppt. H. B. 

 43. Plate XXIX. 



Punjab: ffa^ara i?i«#.— Black Mt., Trotter in List; near Chittabat, Gatacre 

 1888 ; (7/ia??j&fli— Dalhousie 7500', Ravi Vy. 8000', McDonell; " Chamba" J. Marten 1898 ; 



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