A NEW TYPE OF ANEIMIA. 



By George E. Davenport. 

 With Plate by Chas. E. Faxon. 



The discovery of a new fern always awakens pleasur- 

 able emotions in the minds of fern lovers, and next to 

 the enjoyment of finding a new plant for one's self is that 

 felicity of unselfishness which finds pleasure in the dis- 

 coveries of others. But when, as in the present instance, 

 the discovery brings to light not only a new species, 

 but the type for a new section in an established genus, 

 our emotions become doubly pleasurable. It is therefore 

 with no little pleasure that I introduce to the readers 

 of the Fern Bulletin one of the most interesting fern 

 plants that has been found since the discovery of that 

 very remarkable fern Trochopteris elegans Gardner, in 

 Brazil, in 1840, and which remains to this time the only 

 representative of a genus that was created expressly 

 for it. 



The Brazilian plant is unquestionably the most re- 

 markable fern known. It grows in a circular rosette- 

 like form scarcely more than two inches in diameter, with 

 the small round-lobed fronds lying perfectly flat one above 

 the other, and arranged with their bases attached to the 

 central tuft exactly as the spokes of a wheel are ar- 

 ranged around its revolving axis. Hence the derivation 

 of the name Trochopteris — Trocho — from the Greek for 

 a wheel, and pteris, a fern. The plant itself would never 

 be taken for a fern, so unlike is it in every way, if it 

 was not for the character of the fruit which it bears on 

 the laciniated edges of its lowermost lobes, and which 

 consists of A 11 cimia -like sporangia and spores. An in- 

 teresting historical account and description of this curious 

 fern plant, with illustrations, may be found in Hooker's 

 "London Journal of Botany," Volume I (1842), p. 74. 

 t. 74. There is also a beautiful analysis^ in color in 

 Hooker and Bauer's "Genera" (104) and in "Synopsis 

 Filicum," Plate VIII, p 67; and a fairly good specimen 



