208 



THE BOOK OF CHOICE FERNS. 



D. piloselloides— pil-o-sel-lo-i'-des (Pilosella-like), Presl, 



This is one of those species that are found in many habitats, in some 

 cases very distant from one another. It is a native alike of the Bengal plains, 



Burmah, Ceylon, South India, the 

 plains of Malabar, Java, the Philip- 

 pine Islands, and Japan, in which 

 places it covers the trunks of trees. 

 The following is the description of 

 it by Colonel Beddome, to whom 

 we are also indebted for permission 

 to. reduce Fig. 46 from his "Ferns 

 of Southern India " : Rhizome long, 

 filiform (thread-hke), and of a wiry 

 nature, covered with closely-pressed, 

 diamond-shaped, laciniated scales, 

 which sometimes are hair-pointed ; 

 stipes (stalks) about |in. long in 

 the barren fronds, often about lin. 

 long in the fertile ones. These 

 fronds are dimorphous (of two 

 forms), the barren ones roundish or 

 obovate (somewhat egg-shaped), Jin. 

 to 2in. long, fin. broad, very thick 

 and fleshy, and when young more 

 or less covered with stellate (star- 

 like) hairs ; the fertile ones 2in. to 

 4in. long and Jin. to ^in. broad. 

 The sori (spore masses) are dis- 

 posed in broad, continuous, marginal 

 lines, often at length confluent and 

 covering the whole under- surface ; the capsules are mixed with a few stellate 

 paraphyses (succulent, jointed filaments). This singular species, of easy 

 culture, is particularly effective when grown on a piece of dead Tree Fern. — 

 Hooher, Species Filicum, v., p. 190. Nicholson, Dictionary of Gardening, i., 

 p. 495. Beddome, Ferns of Southern India, t. 55. 



Fig. 46. Drymoglossum piloselloides 

 (4 nat. size). 



