122 W. WALTER WATTS. 



SOME NOTES ON Blechnum capense, (L.) Schlecht. 

 (with description of var. Gregsoni, var. nov.) 



By Rev. W. Walter Watts. 



(Read before the Royal Society of N. S. Wales, July 7, 1915.] 



Special interest attaches to the fern known as Blechnum 

 capense, a species having a wide tropical and subtropical 

 range, being found in South Africa, South America, and in 

 "the mountains of all countries and islands of the South 

 Seas and the Malayan area" (teste Dr. Christ). It is well- 

 known and widely spread in Australasia, especially on the 

 Blue Mountains of New South Wales, in the southern dis- 

 tricts of Australia generally, and in Tasmania and New 

 Zealand. 



Many botanists, in the nineteenth century, following 

 Wiildenow (1809), divided the ferns now included in Blech- 

 num into the two genera, Lomaria and Blechnum. Lomaria 

 was made to consist of blechnoid ferns having dimorphic 

 leaves, the fruiting fronds, or their segments, being of linear 

 form, with a marginal sorus covered by an involucre (indu- 

 sium) formed of the modified and incurved margin of the 

 leaf; Blechnum consisted of similar ferns in which, how- 

 ever, the leaves were of uniform shape, the sorus parallel 

 with, and adnate to, the midrib, and the involucre indepen- 

 dent of, and at a distance from, the margin. In some 

 systems the two genera were even placed in separate 

 tribes. 



Under this classification, Blechnum capense appeared as 

 Lomaria capensis, Willd., or Lomaria procera, (Forst.) 

 Spreng. 



