372 



Ferns of British India and Ceylon. 



creeping, clothed with bright ferruginous hair-like scales ; stipes a 

 span to i foot and more long; fronds i-i| foot long, submembra- 

 naceous, sometimes pubescent or even subtomentose, glabrous sub- 

 coriaceous in age, pinnated, pinnae almost invariably opposite, sessile 

 in distant pairs 5-8-9 inches long, by i\-2 inches broad from an 

 obtuse base, elliptical-oblong, finely and long-caudately acuminated 

 entire, but with a very distinct membranous hyaline margin ; main 

 veins manifest, connected by transverse ones forming areoles, of 

 which one or all are soriferous, these areoles are filled up with a net- 

 work of lesser areoles which 

 have free included veinlets ; 

 sori often large, 1-2 in the 

 primary areoles, hence they 

 are 1-2 serial between the 

 main veins, and 3-4 serial in 

 a direction parallel with the 

 costa. Hook. Sp. Fil. v. 91. 



J0;r j Bedd. F.B.I.t. 318. Poly- 



<*&&} 



N?2I2 



PLEOPELTIS HIMALAYENSIS. {Hook.) 



podium venustum, Wall. Cat. 

 305, not of Desv. 



Himalayas, 6,000-10,000 

 feet elevation, from Nepal 

 to Bhotan, Khasya Hills 

 (JerdonJ, young plants often 

 have simple or 3-lobed fronds. 

 Mettenius considers it only 

 a variety of Lehmanni. Mr. 

 Clarke calls the tomentose 



variety, var. niphoboloides, but it graduates into the type. 



35. Pleopeltis leiorhiza. {Wall.) Rhizome very thick, 

 fleshy, wide-creeping, covered with ovate adpressed peltate, slaty-brown 

 scales ; stipes 1-2 feet long, erect ; fronds 2-4 feet long, 1-2 feet 

 broad ; pinnae narrow lanceolate-linear coriaceous acuminate at the 

 apex, margins entire, sessile and rather decurrent at the base, or 



