NEW STATION FOR A RARE FLORIDA FERN. 



BY WILLARD N. CLUTE. 



Until recently the claim of Hypolepis repens to a 

 place in the fern flora of the United States rested upon 

 a single specimen from Oakland, Florida, reported 

 some years since by L. M. Underwood. Many parts 

 of this state are still so little known, botanically, that 

 further reports of the occurrence of this fern, instead 

 of occasioning surprise are rather in the line of the 

 expected. 



The good fortune of discovering a second locality 

 for this species belongs to Rev. and Mrs. J. C. Arm- 

 strong of Chicago, who first found it a year or more 

 ago while wintering in Florida. The new locality is 

 near Lake Charm, in Orange County, Florida, about 

 18 miles north-east of Sanford. Mrs. Armstrong 

 writes me that the colony consists of at least a hundred 

 plants growing thriftily in the rich black soil and deep 

 shade of hammock land in company with Blcchmim 

 serrulatum. Some of the fronds were more than three 

 feet high. 



The typical Hypolepis repens has a prickly stipe 

 and rachis but the Armstrong plants, though some- 

 what "rough are not at all prickly and apparently belong 

 to Hookers variety inermis which differs very little 

 from the type in other respects. 



At first glance the plant has the appearance of a 

 Dicksonia since it bears its sporangia on a reflexed 

 tooth of the pinnule, but a closer look shows instead of 

 the inferior, bowl-shaped indusium of Dicksonia, the 

 sori gathered at the tips of the veins and covered by an 

 indusium formed by the reflexed margin of the lesser 

 divisions of the frond. Its affinities will thus be seen 

 to be with Pferis, Pellaea and Chilanthes and not so 

 very far removed from Adiantum. Plants sent to 

 the north a year ago have taken kindly to pot culture 

 and are reported as excellent for this purpose. 



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