DESCRIPTIONS OF THE SPECIES 
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Genus 35. Lonchitis Linn. 
A genus consisting of two species, closely allied to Pteris, 
and only distinguished by having the sori confined to the 
sinuses ; while from Hypolepis and Cheilanthes it is dis- 
tinguished by its anastomosing venation. Four or five species 
are known from tropical Africa and Madagascar, and one 
from tropical America. 
148. Lonchitis pubescens Willd. 
Plate 13 1. Lower pinna of nearly barren frond, nat. size. 
Plate 132. Part of fertile frond, nat. size. 
Root stock sub-erect or procumbent, densely clothed with 
brown shining woolly tomentum, or shag. Roots very strong, 
wiry. Fronds three to four feet long or more, two to three 
feet broad, two to three-pinnatifid, thinly herbaceous in 
texture, and having a stout hairy stipe two to three feet 
long, and paleaceous at the base. 
Frond very various in cutting, but generally with the 
upper pinnae more or less connected by a wing along the side 
of the rachis. This wing increases in breadth upward, and 
often disappears in the lower half of the frond, where the 
pinnae are shortly stalked or sessile, or more or less connected 
with the rachis above them. Pinnae lanceolate from a wide 
base, the lower twelve to eighteen inches long, two to six 
inches broad, cut nearly, but not quite to the rachis, into 
ovate-deltoid segments, which when nearly barren are entire, 
with the sori between the upper pinnules ; but when abun- 
dantly fertile cut halfway to the mid-rib into rounded lobes, 
and bearing sori at the bottom of the sinus between each of 
these lobes. Involucre crescent-shaped or reniform between 
the lobes, but occasionally more or less elongated between the 
pinnules. Veins uniting into numerous irregular areolae, but 
with a line of larger and more elongated areolae along each 
mid-rib. Whole frond finely villose, especially on the rachis, 
mid-rib, and veins of the under-surface. Exceedingly vari- 
able in cutting, and in the amount of hairs on the frond ; and 
one form formerly held as a species under the name of L. 
