310 BOTANY. 



Tribe II. PTERIDEJB. 



IV. CHEILANTHES. Swartz. 

 §1. ADIANTOPSIS. 



Involucres separate, one to each fertile veinlet. 



Cheilanthes Californica, Mettenius. 



Eootstock short, creeping, chaffy with narrow dark-brown scales; 

 stalks densely tufted, dark -brown, glossy, 4-8 inches long ; frond 4 inches, 

 long or less, broadly deltoid-ovate, smooth on both surfaces, delicately 

 quadripinnatifid [i. e., 4-pinnate, with all but the primary rachis narrowly 

 winged] ; lower pinnae largest, triangular, more developed on the lower 

 side; upper ones gradually smaller and simpler; ultimate pinnules lan- 

 ceolate, very acute, incised or serrate, and when fruiting with usually sepa- 

 rate, crescent-shaped, membranaceous involucres in the sinuses between 

 the teeth, which also are often at length recurved. — Mett. iiber Cheilanthes, 

 p. 44. Hypolepis Californica, Hook. Sp. Fil. ii, p. 71, t. 88. Aspidotis Cali- 

 fornica, Nuttall, MS. in Herb. Hooker. 



Moist shady caSons and ravines in the Coast raDges of California, received by me only from Santa 

 Barbara and Los Angeles Counties, but probably of wider range. Sonora, Mexico, Schott. A very deli- 

 cate and pretty Fern, aDd eagerly sought by collectors. Sir William Hooker placed it in the genus 

 Hypolepis, a genus of large Ferns, which are utterly unlike this plant in habit, and are really much nearer 

 to Phegopteris than to Cheilanihes. The involucres are lunulate, and of a different substance from the 

 lobule, at the base of which they are placed, but as the sporangia ripen this lobule is frequently reflexed, 

 so as to form a sort of second involucre. 



$ 2. EUCHEILANTHES. 



Involucres more or less confluent, usually extending over the apices of sev- 

 eral veinlets, but not continuous all round the segment. 



* Segments of the frond smooth, or glandular only. 



Cheilanthes Wrightii, Hooker. 



Stalks castaneous, slightly chaffy at the base, 1-2 inches high ; frond 

 herbaceous, 2-3 inches long, ovate-oblong, pinnate, with about five rather 

 distant pairs of deltoid bipinnatifid pinnee ; secondary pinnse oblong, more 



