THE FERN BULLETIN 



VOL. VI. 



JANUARY, 1898. 



NO. 1. 



FOUR NEW SPECIES OF OPHIOGLOSSUM. 



By E. G. Britton. 



N the Fourth of July excursion of the Torrey Botanical Club 



in company with the Philadelphia and Washington bota- 



nists, a patch of Ophioglossum was found by Mr. Joseph 

 Crawford and Mr. Charles Louis Pollard near Wildwood, New 

 Jersey, which was so different from the common forms of O. vul- 

 gatum, that we at once concluded it was a new species. It grew 

 in open wood, under oaks, cedars and holly trees, not far from the 

 beach, in soil so sandy that grass grew but sparingly, and bay- 

 berry bushes were common. The stalks were only slightly above 

 the ground, but those of the fertile spikes were longer, and the 

 spikes mostly twisted. None of the plants were more than 6-7 

 inches in height, and mostly two grew from the same rootstock. 

 They had an erect, rigid habit, and at maturity were yellow in 

 color, making the patch quite conspicuous, not only for the num- 

 ber of the plants, several hundreds grew together, but for their 

 crowded position. A tuft five inches across would contain 20-30 

 plants. The leaf blades were thick, and rather fleshy, lanceolate 

 or ovate-lanceolate in the larger ones, (1-2 inches) narrower and 

 longer in the basal, sterile leaves. The venation was rather hard 

 to see, even after they were pressed, and there were fewer basal 

 veins, and less reticulate areolation than in O. vulgatum. After 

 considerable correspondence and comparison of specimens, it ha-> 

 been discovered that O. vulgatum does vary greatly in the size 

 and shape of its fronds, but none have been seen which agreed 

 exactly in habit and constancy with the specimens from Wild- 

 wood, which have been described as Ophioglossum arenarium, n. sp. 



Prof. Underwood called my attention to Prantl's revision of 

 the genus ["Jahrb. d. K. Bot. Gart." Berlin, 3: 297-350, 1884], 

 where are described two new North American species, thus far not 

 included in any of our text-books, and seemingly unrecognized by 



