Prats 40. 
LOMARIA L’Hermiyteri, Bory. 
LP’ Herminier’s Lomaria. 
Lomarta L’ Herminieri; caudex short, moderately thick, ascending, paleaceous 
with ovate, brown, deciduous scales, sending down copious wiry roots from 
below, and bearing tufted brownish stipites at the apex, which are three or 
four inches to a span long; fronds of two kinds, coriaceous, oblong-ovate ; 
sterile ones a foot and more long, four inches broad, very deeply nearly to 
the rachis pinnatifid, the sinuses very acute; segments oblong, subfalcate, 
obtuse, entire, often opposite, one to three pairs of the basal ones forming 
so many semicircular, decurrent, dwarf lobes; veins oblique, forked, vein- 
lets clavate at the apex; jferéile fronds smaller, pinnated, with distant, 
linear, generally alternate pinnz. 
Lomaria L’Herminieri. Bory in Litt. 1838, according to Schkuhr, Fil. Suppl. 
p. 173. ¢.713. Hook. Sp. Fil. 0. 3. p. 9. 
Buecunum L’Herminieri. Metten. Fil. Hort. Lips. p. 64. t. 4. f. 18, 14 (fruc- 
tification only). 
Has. Tropical America ; first detected in Guadeloupe by LZ’ Herminier, n. 99 
ter, and n. 2? Caracas, Linden, n. 198. Tovar, Moritz, x. 883. Santa 
Martha, Purdie.—Cultivated in the stoves at Kew. 
Kunze’s figure well represents the specimens of our plant 
from the above-mentioned localities. It belongs to a group of 
Lomaria having the sterile fronds deeply pinnatifid, of which 
twenty-three kinds are enumerated in our third volume of ‘ Spe- 
cies Filicum,’ but of many of which we have had occasion to 
express our doubts about the soundness of the species. The 
character of the present one is made to depend mainly on the 
sudden contraction of the basal segments of the sterile frond, so 
as to exhibit a stipes winged as it were with lobes in its upper 
half; but as Kunze acknowledges these lobes to be sometimes 
reduced to one, the species then is not easily distinguished from 
L. lanceolata, Spr.; and that again very nearly approaches some 
forms of Z. attenuata, Willd. The latter, however, and Z. ptero- 
“pus, Kze., have a stout, creeping, horizontal caudex, by which 
they are best recognized. 
Prats 40. Sterile and fertile fronds of Lomaria L’ Herminieri, Bory,—natu- 
ral size. Fig. 1. Portion of a sterile segment, showing the venation. 2. Portion 
of a fertile pinna,—magnified. 
OCTOBER lst, 1861. 
