The present species of Botrychium was long supposed to be 
peculiar to North America, from Canada (according to Willdenow 
and Smith, though I have never myself seen Canadian specimens) 
to Carolina: but unquestionably the same plant appears, gene- 
rally in a larger form, in Mexico, and in the northern parts of 
South America and Ecuador. It inhabits also Northern Eu- 
rope, but, from the few specimens I have seen from thence, in a 
very reduced form. The Botrychium lanuginosum of Wallich, 
from India, is remarkable in almost every instance in having its 
fertile peduncle arising, not from the base of the sterile frond, 
but from near the middle of its rachis. But my first authentic 
specimens received from Dr. Wallich, still preserved in my her- 
barium, and figured in the ‘Icones Filicum’ (tab. 79), have the 
peduncle exactly as in the American plant, and is noways diffe- 
rent from it. There are, indeed, other allied species, and de- 
scribed ones (B. daucifolium, Wall., B. matricarioides, Willd., 
B. australe, Br., B. ternatum, Sw., B. lunarioides, Sw., etc.), in 
which the peduncle originates from the stipes considerably below 
the sterile frond, and even from near the base of the stipes. But 
indeed all the species of the genus require a careful revision, and 
the notion, still too prevalent, must be abandoned, that Ferns of 
widely separated localities are specifically different: and then 
the seventeen species enumerated by Presl, in his ‘ Supplementum 
Tentaminis Pteridographiz,’ will require to be reduced. 
The present Fern is undoubtedly very variable in the size of 
the frond, aad in being more or less compound. Our figure well 
represents the usual size and normal state of the plant. 
Puare 29. Fertile plant of Botrychium Virginianum, Sw.,—natural size. 
Fig. 1. Ultimate pinnule of a sterile frond. 2. Portion of a fertile raceme. 
3. Capsule :— ail more or less magnified. 
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