I50 DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 



of the plant for the year. Even syringing the plant frequently will not save it ; in fact, 

 the rapid evaporation afterwards seems to increase the mischief. To expect a fern to 

 live after its roots have been all hacked away, as is generally done with plants brought 

 from the West Coast and elsewhere, is utterly absurd, and equally so to expose one 

 which only grows in an atmosphere saturated with moisture, and in the deepest shade 

 and shelter, to the dry air of a room, or to sun and wind in a garden. 



GENUS SCHIZCEA (Skite-zce-a) 

 Has capsules sessile in two rows, which cover one side of close distichous spikes, 

 which form separate fertile segments, at apex of fronds. 



SUB-GENUS EUSCHIZCEA (Yu-skite-zce-a) 

 Has the fertile segments pinnate ; frond terete or sub-terete, and capsules biserial 



SCHIZCEA FISTULOSA (Skite-zoe-a fis-tu-lo-sa) 



PLATE XIT., No. 5, 

 Is found in Australia, Tasmania, New Caledonia, Chili, and Madagascar, as well as in 

 New Zealand and Chatham Islands. It usually occurs on poor, cold, wet, clay land ; 

 but Mr. Thomson mentions having " gathered it, in a stunted condition, in peaty 

 swamps in Stewart's Island, at the head of Paterson Inlet," and I can testify to its 

 beino- abundant on the pumice flats about Rotorua, and growing luxuriantly in the 

 immediate vicinity of the hot springs. It is particularly abundant near what is known 

 as " the Lobster Bath," at Ohinemutu, the water of which turns the skin a bright red 

 lasting for some hours. The fern varies in height up to twelve inches ; but a smaller 

 variety classed in the Synopsis as "S. AustraHs," and by Sir W. J. Hooker as " S. 

 fistulosa, var. Australis," only one to two inches high, occurs in the Falkland and 

 Auckland Islands, and I think will be found to grow in New Zealand at high levels. 

 At all events very stunted forms do grow at the high elevations, and I think it likely 

 that what Mr. Thomson gathered may have been it. The normal form is found here 

 and there all over the Colony. 



This Schizosa has no distinft stipes ; in faft, it may be said to have none, or to 

 be nearly all stipes, according as one regards it ; as the whole frond consists of a 

 slender smooth, brownish-red stalk, not more than a thirtieth or a fortieth of an inch 

 thick rounded at the back and rather deeply channelled in front, surmounted by a 

 brush of linear segments, covered with capsules, and growing touching each other on 

 one side of the stalk only. This brush is from a half to an inch long, by about an 

 eighth of an inch broad. The fronds grow in clusters, sometimes of twenty or thirty, 

 close together, from shortly-creeping scaly rhizomes. My own experience agrees with 

 that of Mr. Thomson as to the difficulty of cultivating this fern. The plants which 

 I brought from Rotorua seemed to do well for a time, but the young fronds were eaten 



