DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 



fern in the neighbourhoods of Napier and Gisborne respeftively. As the plant occurs 

 in Australia, and the eastern side of the North Island has a climate more nearly 

 resembling the Australian one than any other part of the Colony, I have thought it 

 best to include it as doubtfully a New Zealand species, just as Davallia Forsteri is 

 always so classed, so that if any of my readers should come across the fern they may 

 be able to identify it. The rhizome is short, ereft and scaly. The stipes short, and 

 both it and the rachis are stout, erect, light brown, and thickly covered with whitish 

 hairs. The frond, which is sometimes eighteen inches or two feet long, is narrowly 

 lanceolate and simply pinnate. The lateral pinnae are ascending, opposite or sub- 

 opposite, long, narrow, and tapering with rounded ends, and their edges are finely 

 serrated though the serration disappears along the fertile portions of the pinnae. The 

 terminal pinna is about twice as long as the others and sharply pointed or tailed. 

 The sori are broad, light brown, and do not extend to either end of the pinna. They 

 are often confined to the upper half of the frond, the pinnae of the lower portion being 

 barren. Colour medium green. Texture coriaceous ; veins indistinft, free and forked. 

 The plant is easily cultivated, and rather a favourite one with fern-growers at home. I 

 have also seen it in ferneries at Christchurch, but have never heard of any one but 

 myself in the North Island cultivating it. If, however, plants of it occur in ferneries 

 at Gisborne and Napier, spores from dead fronds which had been thrown out might 

 get scattered by the wind and produce plants, but this would hardly account for the 

 Tarawera example. 



PTERIS LOMARIOIDES. (Pter-ris lo-ma-re-o-i-dees.) 



PLATE XXV., Nos. 4 and 4a. 

 In volume XII of Philosophical Transactions, page 380, the Revd. W. Colenso 

 describes, under the above provisional name, a fern of which a single barren frond had 

 been brought to him in 1872 by an acquaintance who had gathered it in a patch of 

 bush by the roadside near Tapuaeharuru. His description is as follows : — " Stipe 

 (upper part only) five inches long (?), erect, straight, slender, naked, smooth, 

 channelled above, straw-coloured. Frond six and a half inches long, five inches broad, 

 symmetrical, broadly round, cordate (in outline), pedate, smooth, glabrous, very 

 membranaceous, semi-transparent, colour (dry) a light olive green, pinnate, two pairs 

 only and one long terminal segment five and a quarter inches long, ten lines broad, 

 petiolate, linear lanceolate (together with pinnae) decreasing but little and very 

 gradually downwards, sub-acuminate, acute. Pinnaeopposite, linear-lanceolate, oblique, 

 obtuse, the two pairs one inch apart on rachis, upper pair sub-sessile and slightly 

 decurrent on upper side three and three-quarter inches long nine lines broad ; lower 

 pair petiolate and pedate, slightly decurrent on upper side, three and a half inches 

 long eight lines broad, lowermost pedate segments one and three-quarter inches long, 

 six lines broad, sub-sessile, dimidiate and curved upwards, all four pinnae inclined 



