120 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
~ the ultimate segments of the frond conspicuously nar- 
rower and more widely separated from one another, 
and the sori even smaller than in the type’. . 
submarginal, and protected by a reflexed tooth of he 
pinnule,’ and adding that ‘‘careful search has failed 
to disclose any vestige of indusium in the American 
material.”” Because of an approach which a few speci- 
mens are held to show “to the European form in the 
cutting of the frond,” the author regards the American 
plant as a “geographical variety rather than a species,”’ 
despite the complete suppression of indusia in all Amer- 
ican specimens. An examination of the very ample 
material in the National Herbarium, however, including 
some of the numbers cited by Butters as intermediate 
in leaf cutting, reveals no specimens which are truly 
intermediate in this or other respects, the extremes in 
“leafiness’”’ among the American specimens being no - 
greater than may reasonably be attributed to partial 
sterility or to favorable or adverse conditions of habitat. 
he American material is essentially uniform in all 
respects save size, and since it differs constantly from 
the European plant it should rank as a distinct species, 
Athyrium americanum.’ The invariable absence of 
reduced indusia, which might be regarded as an incon- 
sequential point if the plants were otherwise like the 
European, is a substantiating character of some worth; 
but disregarding this feature, the plant is different 
enough in gross characters to warrant separation. The 
conspicuously narrow, oblique, widely separated seg- 
ments give it a strict, singularly skeleton-like aspect 
widely different from that of the leafy European plant, 
* Athyrium apnnageseerten (Butters) Maxon. (Atnyri Ipestre amer. 
een Butters . 204.) 
o type sie Phir been designated by Butters, the following 
collection, represented in both the Gray and National Herbaria, may be 
regarded as the type: Rogers Pass, British Columbia, alt. 1320 meters, 
Aug. 23, 1904, E. R. Heacock (in Shaw’s ‘‘Selkirk Flora’) 554. : 
