DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 49 



reddish brown with sharp frost ; and the veins, which are zigzag and two or three 

 times forked, are very inconspicuous. In the Middle Island plant the stipes and 

 rachis are generally clothed with dark reddish brown tomentum, rather thickly studded 

 with scales of a very light brown colour. The lower pinnae are longer and less 

 deflexed; and the stipes is also far longer, and densely clothed with long whitish 

 scales towards its base. Both forms are slightly hairy (with white hairs) on their 

 surfaces, but the southern one is the more so, and has longer hairs. Both are easily 

 cultivated, and very handsome plants ; but from their creeping habit are rather 

 unsuited to pot-culture. The determination of the caudex to grow horizontally will 

 make it burst out the side of an earthenware pot and force a zinc one out of shape, 

 but the plant will do well in an outdoor rockery. This fern only grows naturally in 

 the open ground above the forest level ; and often extends over large areas where 

 there is not even a shrub to afford it shelter. It is never found more than a few yards 

 within the bush. No doubt its pecuhar mode of growth has been necessitated by its 

 having to withstand the fierce winds which sweep over the situations in which it is 

 found ; but the habit has become so fixed that the plant adheres to it even when 

 placed under more. favourable conditions. Possibly plants raised from spores might 

 change their habit, but I do not know any one who has so raised any, as comparatively 

 few fern-collectors have ever seen the plant, much less cultivated it. It surprised me 

 much to find, when some plants were brought from the back of the Canterbury Province 

 a year or two ago, that several of the best authorities on ferns in Wellington thought 

 it was a new one, though I had had plants of it from the Ruahine range in cultivation 

 for a lengthened period. It has been met with at Ruapehu, Mount Egmont, and the 

 Tararua and Ruahine ranges in the North Island, and probably occurs at high levels 

 elsewhere. In the Middle Island it has been found at Nelson, Westland, Canterbury, 

 Otago, and Southland, and as it descends to a lower level in that part has attrafted 

 more notice. I have often wondered that it does not occur at lower levels still 

 in both Islands, as I have grown it so long myself and have seen it in ferneries and 

 gardens, not many feet above the sea, both at Dunedin and Christchurch. Possibly 

 it requires a cold misty atmosphere to develop its spores, and the only chance of cul- 

 tivating it is to bring down young plants, as is done regularly every autumn by 

 florists down South. I have a dried specimen for which I am indebted to Mr. A. C. 

 Purdie of Dunedin, of a variety discovered a few years ago on Mount Cargill, near 

 that city, in which all the pinnae fork from their very bases, one half being deflexed and 

 the other ascending. Those on one side of the rachis thus cross each other all the 

 way up the frond, giving it a most curious appearance. Young plants showing this 

 peculiarity would be well worth cultivating if they can be obtained, as they probably 

 can, the plant originally observed being apparently merely overgrown by brambles at 

 the present time. 



