Ferns of British India and Ceylon. 227 
forming loops near the costa, sometimes very regularly, some- 
times only occasionally, in the contracted fertile fronds all the veins 
free ; sori generally apical on the free veinlets ; involucre reniform. 
PresL Rel. Hceitck. 36, /. 5, fig. 3. Aspidium fuscipes, Bedd. Sup, 
Ferns ^ f. 366. Aspidium fuscipes, JVallidi, partly, but not the type 
sheet, which is Lastrea sagenioides. 
East Bengal Plains, extending into Assam, Cachar, and Chitta- 
gong. Khasya and Sikkim hills up to 3,000 feet elevation. Birma 
and the Malay peninsula. In habit much like small Aspidium cicu- 
tarium, but venation different, and 
easily known by the persistent black 
scales towards the base of the 
stipe ; in the Synopsis Filicuni it 
has been erroneously lumped with 
Lastrea dissecta by Hooker and 
Baker. 
5. Pleocnemia Clarkei. 
{Bedd) Stipes and rachis slightly 
pubescent ; fronds 2-3 feet long, 
lanceolate, narrowed at the base 
into distant auricles, softly shortly 
villous, herbaceous, pinnate ; pinn^ 
numerous, alternate, if -2 inches 
broad, pinnatifid nearly to the rachis, 
the pinnules lanceolate from a broad 
base, irregular as to length, and 
from subentire to deeply pinnatifid (on the same pinna) acute at 
the apex, lowest veins forming arcs along the costa of the pinnules 
from which proceed free veinlets ; veins of the pinnules pinnate, 
or once or twice forked, the lowest veinlet of a group often looped 
with the next group ; involucre kidney-shaped, hairy and ciliate. 
Bedd. Sup. Ferns, t. 368. Nephrodium artinexum, Clarke, F. N. I. 
A 536. 
Sikkim ; near Dikeeling, 4,500 feet elevation. 
116. 
PLEOCNEMIA CLARKEI. 
{Bedd. 
