308 BOTANY. 



IVotholaena Hookeri. 



Rootstock short, creeping, densely covered with rigid lanceolate dark- 

 brown scales, with a strong midrib; stalks tufted, 4-8 inches high, reddish- 

 brown, wiry, smooth and shining, the base only with a few ovate scales; 

 frond 2-3 inches long and broad, almost regularly pentagonal, composed of 

 three divisions ; the middle one slightly stalked, rhomboid-ovate, pinnatifid 

 into a few oblong toothed segments, of which the second pair is larger 

 than the first; the side divisions sessile, deltoid, pinnatifid on the upper side, 

 much as is the central division, but each bearing on the lower side a single 

 very large pinnatifid basal segment, and above it smaller segments like 

 those of the upper side; upper surface green, lower surface covered with a 

 pale-yellow powder; sporangia sub-marginal; the edge of the frond 

 slightly recurved. — N. Candida, var. 5-fido-palmata, Hooker, Sp. Fil. v, p. 

 111. N. cretacea, D. C Eaton in Botany of Mexican Boundary, and in 

 Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, iv, p. 18 ; not of Liebmann! 



Western Texas to El Paso, C. Wright, 821. New Mexico, in several places, Bigelow, Schott, Bothrock, 

 Mrs. Sumner. Not seen in California, for "La Cuesta" is in New Mexico. My own recently recovered 

 notes on the North American Ferns of the Hookerian herbarium show that Liebmann's N. cretacea is a 

 yellow-powdered form of N. Candida, atd Mr. Baker is doubtless right in referring Chcilanthes Borsigiana, 

 Mettenins, to the same species. As Sir William Hooker has remarked in Species Filicum that the pres- 

 ent is "probably a distinct species," I can not do better than to call it by his name, rejecting the incon- 

 venient appellation under which he distinguished it as a variety. In general appearance it is much like 

 small specimens of Gymnogramme triangularis. From N. Candida it differs in several respects, most 

 markedly perhaps in having the second pair of primary pinnae or segments decidedly smaller than the 

 third pair, whereas in the former this second pair is larger than the pair next above it. 



Plate XXX represents a plant of ordinary size. Fig. 1, a scale of the rootstock, magnified six 

 diameters; fig. 2, a scale from the base of the stalk ; fig. 3, a segment of one of the pinnae, showing the 

 sporangia and the slightly recurved margin. 



h — i- Fronds 2-4 pinnate, the primary and secondary pinnce distinctly 

 stalked, ultimate divisions very small. 



Notholaena dealbata, Kunze. 



Stalks densely tufted, wiry or capillary, nearly black, polished ; rachis 

 and all its branches very straight, capillary, black and shining ; frond del- 

 toid-ovate, 4-pinnate at the base, gradually simpler above; pinnge mostly 

 opposite; ultimate pinnules £-1 line long, oval and entire, or some of them 

 3-lobed; upper surface green, under surface white- pul vera ceous. — Am. Jour. 



