LO MARIA. 



387 



case they are furnished with numerous narrower and shorter leaflets, which, 

 instead of being contracted in their whole length, are like the barren ones 

 at the base of the fertile frond, above which part they are very narrow ; 

 they are conspicuously dilated or widened at the base, where they 

 are connected with the midrib, a character which gives the whole plant 

 a unique appearance. — Hooker, Synopsis Filicum, iii., p. 5. Nicholson, 

 Dictionary of Gardening, ii., p. 293. Lowe, Ferns British and Exotic, 

 iv., t. 56. 



L. d. bipinnatifida — bip-in-na-tif-id-a (twice divided nearly to the 

 midrib), Moore. 



This greenhouse variety, native of South Australia, is undoubtedly one 

 of the most pleasing and attractive of Lomarias in cultivation, not only on 

 account of its light, cheerful colour, equally bright on both sides of the 

 beautifully -cut fronds, which in general appearance resemble those of the 

 Welsh Polypody {Polypodium vulgar e cambricum), but also owing to its 

 drooping habit and other characteristics perfectly distinct from those of the 

 species to which it is said to be related. It is a somewhat arborescent Fern, 

 of symmetrical habit ; its numerous broad barren fronds, which often measure 

 3ft. in length including their short stalks, and 6in. in breadth, rise evenly 

 from the crown of a short, robust stem, and, spreading outwards in all 

 directions, arch in a graceful manner. Their leaflets are so closely set that 

 the parts overlap each other, and are cut down to the midrib, the outer 

 sub-divisions or segments being much toothed and somewhat crisped, which 

 characters give the fronds an elegant, fringed appearance. The peculiarity 

 attached to this useful Fern is that its so-called fertile fronds are, with very 

 rare exceptions, as sterile as the barren ones themselves, for, although 

 there are in collections plants sufficiently strong to produce late in the 

 summer a set of fronds which have all the outward appearance of being 

 fertile, it has not come to our knowledge that more than one instance of 

 real fructification has been recorded ; and, strange to say, the plant that 

 produced the spores, from which a certain quantity of young plants have 

 been raised in this country, became sterile again. The following season it 

 produced as before, and as also do all the other known plants of the same 

 variety, mock-fertile fronds which have their place in the centre of the 



2 c 2 



