THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 
265 
gradually narrowed to both ends— so far as I can see. It is gradually narrowed 
to the apex, but always more or less suddenly to the base. Only occasionally 
it seems to be narrowed to the base equally on both sides ; but that sometimes 
is because one side has been folded up in pressing, or when the shoulders are 
narrower than usual. I should describe the frond as — lanceolate acuminate, one 
half ending at the base before the other, both halves decurrent on the stipes. 
It is as if two longitudinal halves of lance heads, of unequal length, were 
joined together so that the points coincided. The shorter side is sometimes 
more suddenly narrowed than the other. In the same plant some of the fronds 
will have the shorter half of the lance head on one side, and others on the 
other — according as, I think, they have sprung from one or other side of the 
rhizome. Specimens with fronds narrowed at both ends are probably P. fission , 
which have got mixed. The latter-mentioned species has sometimes rather 
broad fronds, and it too sometimes narrows below rather unequally ; but it has 
hardly any stipes, whereas P.Jlocculosum has a stipe of one-third or more the 
length of the frond, 
P . fiocculosum is very common in Dehra, and along the road and canal 
avenues up to Rajpur at the foot of the Himalaya, alt. 2100-3000', chiefly 
on Mango trees, which have rough bark ; but since 1 first observed it in 
1379-80 it seems to have spread also to Toon trees ( Cedrela toona ), the bark o f 
which is much smoother. Above Rajpur, up to about 5000', it grows in the 
forest on various kinds of trees, Bauhinia and others. It is also very abundant 
in the forest in the Gola Valley, below Naini T&l, up to 5000' or higher, on 
rocks as well as on trees. This plant does not shed its fronds annually : they 
are persistent for a time, shrivelling up at the close of the rains, or during a 
prolonged break in them, and uncurling and appearing quite fresh after a good 
fall of rain in the dry season, or at the setting in of the next season’s raius — 
quite hygroscopic in fact. This may be a character of all the species of Nipho- 
bolus , as it is of certain species of some other genera and subgenera— see 
Asplenium exiguum above, and Polypodium ( Phym .) linear e below. Plants of 
P . floeoulosum may be taken from a tree in the cold, or dry hot, season, soaked 
in water till they uncurl, and be then made good specimens of, though of course 
without young fronds. Mr. Trotter took some plants from Dehra to Rawal- 
pindi, and so treated them, and laid them into his herbarium. The rhizome 
is slow growing and never found of any considerable length, and it throws up 
only a few fronds each year, in a tuft. The fronds probably live on until the 
rhizome dies off at the back end. 
Subgenus Drynaria, Bony. 
23. P. propinquum, Wall., Syn. Fil. 367 : C. R. 556. Drynaria 
propinqua, Wall.. Bedd. H. B. 339. 
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