THE PHILIPPINE 
Journal of Science 
C. Botany 
VOL. VII JUNE, 1912 No. 2 
THE ORIGIN AND RELATIONSHIPS OF TAENITIS. 
By Edwin Bingham Copeland. 
(From the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines, Los 
Banos. ) 
Taenitis is one of the ferns which, up to this time, has eluded 
very successfully all attempts at natural classification. It has 
been in such a tribe as the Grammiticleae of Hooker and Baker’s 
“Synopsis,” in company with Notholaena, Brainea, Meniscium, 
Vittaria, Hemionitis and Drymoglossum, that it has seemed least 
out of place, as this tribe has no semblance of naturalness to 
be disturbed by it. A tribe named for this genus was proposed 
by Presl,^ and is maintained with changed composition, as a 
subfamily of Polypodieae, by Diels ^ and Christensen.® Some of 
the other genera included in the group, Drymoglossum for 
instance, are obviously related to the real Polypodieae, and the 
group must have been given its position on their account, for 
Taenitis itself offers hardly a suggestion of such an affinity, 
except in the naked sorus, which it shares with the various 
genera named above, and with many others. 
Taenitis has a hairy rather than scaly rhizome, of very 
characteristic reddish color, non-articulate stipe, and altogether 
non-polypodioid venation. What slight superficial resemblance 
it has to any plants called Polypodium is to certain species of 
Selliguea (Phymatodes) , but its remoteness from these is attested 
by the absence of their very characteristic foliar endodermis. In 
’Tent. Pterid. (1836) 222. 
’ Engler und Prantl, Nat. Pflanzenfam. 1 302. 
’Index Filicum (1906) 46. 
110692 4Y 
