io6 DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 



with a bare patch within it, instead of a mat of fronds. From this cause, it often needs 

 to be divided and repotted, or it will be lost altogether. 



A somewhat thinner, or more membranous-textured form (Plate XXIX, No. 8) 

 was found at Akaroa, between 1840 and 1843, by M. Raoul of the French Frigate 

 L'Aube, and was called by him " Lomaria pumila." This find has been a source of 

 great bewilderment to New Zealand botanists The plant was supposed to have been 

 destroyed through the clearing of the bush where it grew, and it was said that the only 

 living example of it was in Kew Gardens. As I had found at Wanganui a plant which 

 seemed to answer its description, though I was perfectly certain that it was only 

 L. Alpina, I wrote to Mr. J. G. Baker of the Royal Herbarium at Kew, who kindly 

 sent me fronds of the fern in the Gardens there, when I found that it exaftly tallied 

 with my own find. About four years ago, however, the question was set at rest by the 

 late Mr. Potts, of Christchurch, who found that Raoul's plant still survived in the very 

 locality where he had gathered it, so that there is now no doubt at all about the matter. 

 M. Raoul evidently did not know L. alpina, and so called what he found by the other 

 name, and his description of it, as being thin in texture, prevented its being recognised 

 as merely a plant of the well-known fern. At one time it was supposed that what he 

 had found was " L. membranacea," and that he had made the mistake of assigning a 

 creeping rhizome to it ; but that fern seems not to occur in the Canterbury Distrift, 

 and, therefore, M. Raoul could not have found it. The only differences are, rather 

 more lanceolate barren fronds, thinner texture, and barren pinnae decurrent on upper 

 side. Another form of L. alpina has the lower pinnae quite distinft from each other, 

 and all of them slightly narrowed or hollowed on both sides, towards their base. It 

 occurs on the Nelson mountains and in Chih, and has been called " L. Germainii." 

 The separation of its pinnae has caused it to be included in another group in the Synopsis. 

 I had the plant, however, in cultivation for some years, so that I have no doubt as to 

 its being only a form of L. alpina. The mistake, no doubt, arose from its being classed 

 from dried fronds only, instead of from living plants. L. alpina has also been called 

 L. Linearis, Stegania alpina, and Polypodium penna-marina by different botanists, as 

 it occurs in South America, Australia, Tasmania, and the Chatham Islands: 



LOMARIA PARVIFOLIA. (Lo-ma-re-a par-vif-o-lea). 



PLATE XXV., No. 5. 



The fern which the Rev. Mr. Colenso has described under this name, at page 224, 

 Volume XX of the Philosophical Transactions, from some barren fronds brought to 

 him from Tongariro, in 1887, by Mr. Hill, is figured from his description' as above. 

 It would be quite useless to reprint the description, which occupies nearly half a page 

 of the Transactions, because the fronds are evidently examples of the thin form of 

 L. Alpina, which M. Raoul called L. pumila, somewhat elongated, probably through 



