o38 Transactions. — Botany, 



Sir W. Hooker, in his " Species Filicum," gives a full description of P. 



australe, (in which, however, other allied plants from other countries, des- 

 cribed by other botanists, are also by him included,) — in his description, 

 he says, — " at the base and also on the stipites deciduously hairy, the rest 

 at least in maturity glabrous." Baker also, in his late edition of " Syllepsis 

 FilicKm," describes P. australe as having, " Rhizome creeping, texture coria- 

 ceous, stipes and both sides naked or slightly ciliated,* and Dr. Sir Jos. 

 Hooker, both in his "Flora NovaB-Zealandse," and his "Handbook of the 

 New Zealand Flora," describes P. australe as being " glabrous, pubescent, 

 pilose, or ciliate," etc., etc. — done, as 1 take it, and as I have already 

 observed, to embrace all our New Zealand allied plants in one specific des- 

 cription ; believing them to be but one species ; but there are great natural 

 and characteristic differences separating them. 



The rather coarse and long villous adpressed hau-s on the under side of 

 P. paradoxum, growing across and hiding the sori, and giving it there a 

 kind of coarse matted arachnoid appearance, the persistent stout marginal 

 rufous hairs, and the numerous large and reticulated basal scales, — together 

 with each plant being of strictly defined single cfespitose growth, — are good 

 natural characters not pertaining to P. australe, vera. 

 Polypodium (? Goniopteris) pennigerum, Forst., var. hamiltonii, W.O. 



Rhizome erect, tufted: fronds 15-18 inches high, glabrous, oblong-lanceo- 

 late, very membraneous, pinnate, slightly pinnatifid at top, hght-green ; 

 stipes and rhachis slender, subsucculent ; rhacJds and mid-rib hairy above, 

 hairs light-brown ; finnules opposite, distant, slightly petiolate, broadly 

 linear-elongate, not acuminate, pinnatifid to below the veins very nearly 

 to mid-rib, middle ones 3 mches long, 1 inch broad, lowermost pairs very 

 distant, small and auricled upwards, the upper ones are sometimes forked 

 near tips ; lobes large, 5-6 lines long, 3 lines broad, very irregular, puckered 

 and crisped, deeply cut into 4-5 incisions on each side, truncate, retuse, and 

 sharply pointed, the sinus between the lobes large and semicircular ; veins, 

 4l-5 pairs to each lobe, opposite, distant, free throughout; sori globose, few, 

 only a single sorus central on each of lowermost pan- of veins : stipes 2-2^ 

 inches long, scaly at base ; scales ovate, obtuse, rich dark-brown, and finely 

 reticulated. 



Hab. — Wet rocky sides of mountain streamlets, country S.W. from 

 Napier, North Island ; found by Mr. A. Hamilton in 1881. 



This is an elegant species (or new variety) of fern, and will, I have no 

 doubt (if it continues true), become a garden favourite ; at present, plants 

 of it are thriving well in Mrs. Tiffen's fernery in Napier. For some little 



* Loc. cit., p. 322. 



