8 
COPELAND. 
Helminthostachys zeylanica (L.) Hooker. (Plate 111.) 
Rhizome stout, creeping underground; stipes 20 to 35 cm high; sterile 
segment 18 to 35 cm each way, cut to the base into 3 parts each of 
which is pinnatifid or pinnate with 1 to 5 pinnae, which are lanceolate, 
2 to 3 cm broad, herbaceous, entire or irregularly sinuate- toothed ; stipe of 
fertile segment about 10 cm high, the spike-like panicle rather shorter. 
India to New Caledonia and northern Australia, northward to Formosa. 
2. MA Ii ATT 1 AGILE. 
Stem usually large and globose, rarely creeping; fronds circinate in 
vernation, provided with persistent, more or less fleshy stipules ; sori borne 
on the backs of veins; sporangia large, formed from a group of cells, 
with a wall more than one cell thick, opening by a longitudinal slit 
(which rarely shortens to a pore). 
A small and isolated family of ferns of striking aspect, including only Danaeci, 
of tropical America, and the following five genera: 
Sporangia of each sorus not fused together ( Angiopterideae ) 
Fronds at least bipinnate 1. Angiopteris 
Fronds simply pinnate. 
Sori on the specialized border of the pinna 2. Macroglossum , 
Sori midway between costa and margin 3. Archangiopteris 
Sporangia in each sorus fused together. 
Sori elongate, veins free 4. Marattia 
Sori round, veins anastomosing 5. Christensenia 
ANGIOPTERIS Hoffmann. 
Very large ferns with thick, globose, or rarely trunk-like stems, covered 
with leaf-scars and large, fleshy stipules; stipe stout, with an enlarged 
pulvinus at the base; frond usually bipinnate, rarely more divided, pinnae 
attached to rachis by pulvini; sori marginal or submarginal ; sporangia 
usually 6 to 14, at most about 20, in contact but not fused into a 
synangium. 
A genus of majestic ferns, most abundant in the Malay region, extending to 
Polynesia, the Himalaya, and tropical Africa. Hooker and Baker, and most 
other recent writers reduce all to a single species ; at the other extreme is the 
monograph of De Vriese & Hartig, describing 60 species. The number of tenable 
species is certainly large, but the task of determining which of De Vriese & 
Hartig’s species are such, and of describing not a few others, must be left for 
another monographer. 
I give separate mention here only to the Philippine species recently distin- 
guished by Christ. 
Angiopteris evecta (Foist.) Hoffm. 
. . Pinnae opposite, oblong, with linear-acuminate apex, serrate, sori 
in a continuous submarginal series.” Between the real veinlets are 
hyaline pseudo-veins of sclerenchyma, recurrent from the margin almost 
to the costa; up to 20 sporangia in a sorus. 
Tahiti ; and commonly treated as covering the whole range of the genus, and 
including all the forms. 
