234 THE FERNS OF SOUTH AFRICA 
125. Cheilanthes Bolusii Baker. 
Plate 106. Fig. 2. Nat. size. 2 b Pinnule, magnified. 
Rhizome shortly creeping, with lanceolate brown scales,, 
keeled, black. Stipe and rachis stout, dark brown or almost 
black, and shining, with a few lanceolate rusty brown scales 
at the very base. Frond triangular, about as wide as long, 
four-pinnatifid, three to six inches long, two to six inches 
broad, on a stipe four to eight inches long ; pinnae alternate, 
rather distant, widely and unequally deltoid, erecto-patent, 
ascending, with the pinnules longer and more divided on the 
lower than on the upper side. Pinnules oblong, with three 
to six pairs of small, oblique, very much recurved, almost 
globular, bead-like segments, which are glabrous above, and 
somewhat glandular below, but have all the upper and side 
edges so much turned back, hoodlike, that little of the under 
surface can be seen. No separate indusium can be detected : 
the reflexed edge being coriaceous like the rest of the frond. 
Cheilanthes Bolusii Baker in Hk. Ic. PL t. 1636 (1886); C. Chr. Ind. 
172. 
Mr Baker places it in section Physapteris, with the remark 
“near C. induta but 4-pinnatifid, with a black rachis and stipe, 
and small round bullate segments.” He also connects it with 
the Australian C. Sieberi and the Indian C. bullata. 
It is closely connected with C. induta and C. multifida , but 
distinguished from the former by having no tomentum or 
scales on the underside of the frond, and from the latter by 
the segments being further apart, more decurrent, smaller, 
and much more recurved. 
Fig. 1636 Icon. Plant, shows a more expanded frond, with 
the pinnules largest on the upper side of the pinnae, though 
the description puts it the other way. Our figure is from part 
of the type returned from Kew Herb, to Mr Bolus after the 
loss of the remainder of his specimens in the wreck of the 
Windsor Castle , which was the only specimen available when 
our first edition was published. We have since then had 
many specimens of a species believed to be C. Bolusii and 
which shows a variation within itself, especially in connection 
with age, which has necessitated a slightly amended descrip- 
