THE FERN BULLETIN 



47 



the end, when all is regarded as settled, some one is as 

 likely as not to discover new evidence and the battle 

 begins all over ag*ain. 



Something of this nature is concerned with the sub- 

 ject of our sketch. It is not a new species, but those 

 who look for it in standard fern books under the name 

 we have used, will be disappointed. At various times 

 it has been considered a species of Lcptochilus, 

 Hemionitis, Gymnoptcris, Dcndroglossa, Acrosti- 

 chutn and Polybotrya and when Tcctaria was recently 

 made into a genus it temporarily found a place in that. 

 Latest of all, it was made the type of a new genus 

 Hemi gramma by Christ and here it remains for the 

 present. Specifically, at first, it was known as Zol- 

 linger* but laiifolia is said to be older and of course 

 will be used until somebody digs up something more 

 antique. 



Of itself, the fern is an interesting species with the 

 trifoliate leaves characteristic of one large section of 

 the wood-fern family, especially the species Aspidium 

 trifoliatum which at one time occupied the same 

 genus with it. The sterile fronds are rather broad 

 and thick with little to suggest a fern about them, and 

 grow on short stipes from a rather stout and creeping 

 rootstock. The fertile fronds would scarcely be 

 thought by the uninitiated to belong to the same plant. 

 They are slender brownish tridents rising high above 

 the sterile fronds and when mature are so thickly 

 covered on the under side with spore cases, as to com- 

 pletely obliterate all trace of separate sori. If one 

 were given only a section of ripe fertile frond he 

 would unhesitatingly call it an Acrostichum. The 

 veining, however, in this genus is different. In 

 Hemigramma the veins anastomose several times and 

 in arrangement have a superficial resemblance to those 



