152 DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 



It has a shortly-creeping rhizome, producing numerous fronds. These spring up 

 in the same way as those of " S. bifida," and with a similar flattened stem, but 

 narrower. It forks almost immediately, and the branches keep dividing again and 

 again, and spreading out like a fan. The bunches of capsule-spikes at the top are 

 on the very ends of the branches, and form fan-like tufts instead of feather-shaped 

 ones. Texture harsh ; colour yellowish dull green. 



GENUS LYGODIUM (Li-go-de-um), 

 Named from a Greek word " Lygodes," flexible. It has its capsules solitary (or 

 casually in pairs) in the axils of large imbricated involucres, which form spikes, either 

 in separate pinnae or in lax rows along the edges of the leafy ones. There is, in New 

 Zealand, only one fern of this genus, viz -. — 



LYGODIUM ARTICULATUM. (Li-go-de-um ar-tik-u-la-tum.) 



MAORI NAMES "MANGE-MANGE," AND " MOUNGA." 

 PLATE XXII., No. 4. 



This plant, which is confined to New Zealand, is so peculiar in its appearance, 

 that persons who had not studied the subjeft would hardly take it for a fern at all. 

 Its rhizomes are long, varying in thickness, brown, shining, and wiry, without any 

 scales, and twining around and among the stems and branches of trees, which they 

 ascend in this way to a height of a hundred feet or more. They are so tough that the 

 Maoris use them for ropes, and to bind the thatch on their huts, as well as to weave 

 into " hinakis " (basket traps to catch fish, like English eel-baskets); and so hard and 

 stiff, where they bend round anything, that they were sharpened, after being hardened 

 in the fire, and used as fish-hooks. The settlers have found another use for them, viz., 

 bedding. These rhizomes constantly wind themselves into corkscrew-like coils, and 

 the settlers fill bags with these, and make no bad representation of a spring-mattress. 

 The stipes is variable in length, according to the character of the frond, but it and the 

 rachides and costae are also brown and shining. The fronds are of two characters, 

 -viz : — barren and fertile ; but it very often happens that one side of the frond is barren 

 and the other fertile. The barren frond, or portion of a frond, is usually tri or quadri- 

 pinnate, the pinnules being long, narrow, lanceolate, with entire edges, thin texture, 

 and bright green in colour, with forked veins very conspicuous. The fertile frond, 

 or part of a frond, is highly decompound, being sometimes divided seven or eight 

 times, before the ultimate pinnules or capsule spikes are reached. These are 

 arranged in clusters of from three to twelve, radiating from a common centre, are from 

 a quarter of an inch to three eighths of an inch long, and consist of masses of spikes 

 of dark brown or black capsules, partially enclosed in scaly involucres of the same 

 colour. It is a difficult fern to press, as it is jointed at every forking (whence the 

 name) and thus very liable to break somewhere or other, particularly if the specimen 



