DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 69 



many square yards on the ground, or climbs to a great height on tree-trunks 

 enveloping them like ivy. The stipes is black, smooth, and wiry ; usually longer than 

 the frond, and narrowly winged above. It has no rachis, the veins spreading out in a 

 fan-like manner and dividing and sub-dividing as they approach the edge of the frond. 

 The frond is kidney-shaped, glossy and hairless, and generally flat, but sometimes 

 crisped or wavy towards the margin. In barren fronds the edge is entire, but in fertile 

 ones it is surrounded by urn-shaped involucres, from the tops of which short, stout 

 receptacles often projeft to the distance of an. eighth of an inch. Though this 

 fern is more often found on ridges than in flat wet bush, yet it is not very easy to 

 cultivate, requiring a moist atmosphere, a fair amount of light, and shelter from wind 

 It grows best under a bell-glass, in leaf mould, or pounded rotten wood, or among 

 moss, and will not bear having its rhizomes imbedded in earth. By attending to these 

 points, the plant forms a handsome ornament for a room, and requires but little 

 watering. The only variation from the normal form that I have seen occurs at Tara- 

 naki, where the fronds sometimes assume the crescent shape of a cheeseknife. 

 Occasionally, too, but very rarely, the stipes is forked, and produces two fronds. The 

 fern occurs throughout the Northern Island, and all down the West Coast of the 

 Middle Island, but is rare and local in the Canterbury and Otago Provinces. It is 

 also found in Eastern Australia, and the Chatham Islands. 



TRICHOMANES ARMSTRONGII. (Tri-kom-an-ees Arm-strong-e-i.) 



PLATE v., No. 1. 

 This fern is named after its discoverer, Mr. Armstrong, of Christchurch, who 

 found it gi-owing among moss beside a waterfall, near the head of the Waimakariri 

 river. It has since however been found at other places in the Middle Island, and 

 Professor Kirk lately told me he had seen it growing in the moss hanging from the 

 branches of trees, in very damp situations. There seems to be a verv general opinion 

 among fern-collectors that it is identical with Hymenophyllum Cheesemannii and I 

 confess that I incline to that opinion myself ; for though in some specimens, as in that 

 shown in the plate, the sori seem those of Trichomanes, in others, perhaps 

 gathered from the same patch, they are as clearly those of Hymenophyllum. The 

 toothed edge also is characteristic of the sub-genus Leptocyomium of Hymenophyllum 

 and does not occur in any other Trichomanes. The principal difference appears to 

 be that the thick nerve surrounding Hymenophyllum Cheesemannii is absent in T. 

 Armstrongii, but this seems not to be an invariable feature of the former, being found 

 sometimes only on one side of the frond and not on the other, and occasionally absent 

 altogether. If the plants are not identical, T. Armstrongii is a connecting link 

 between the two genera. It has thread-like rhizomes, short stipes, frond consisting of 

 not more than from one to four broad lobes with toothed edges, and terminal 



