Descriptions of the Species. 
43 
1. Gleichenia Polypodioides. Smith. 
Plate i. Natural size. b Part of pinnae, magnified. c Capsule, much 
magnified. 
Rhizome very long, often four to six feet, much branched, 
slender, about one line diameter, when old, brown and polished, 
like stout copper wire, but when young covered with star-like 
tufts of black hairs. The rhizome mostly runs along the surface 
of the soil, rooting down into it, but is sometimes scandent or 
sub-scandent, or hanging in masses over the top of a rock. 
Fronds one to three feet long, on brown polished stalks, which 
are either hairy at the base only, when quite young, and afterwards 
glabrous ; or else woolly-tomentose, especially at the forks. 
Frond dichotomously branched several times, the ultimate 
branches, as well as all the branches down to the first fork, set 
with numerous pinnately arranged pinnae, one to four inches long, 
two to three lines broad, divided down to the rachis into closely 
set, bluntly-pointed pinnules, i line broad, i to lines long. 
The central buds in the lower dichotomous forks frequently deve- 
lop into branches, again repeatedly dichotomous, but without 
pinnae along the main rachis. Fronds are green on the upper, 
and more or less glaucous on the under surface. In young plants 
the pinnules are frequently four to five lines long, but as the plant 
gets older the pinnules become shorter and more rounded. The 
sori are sunk, pit-like, into the substance of the frond, one in the 
upper axil of each fertile pinnule, at the end of a veinlet, and 
contains three to four large capsules each, which fall off soon after 
mid-summer. 
Schlechtendal makes two varieties, viz. : — 
A. vulgaris, pinnules green on underside. 
B. argentea, pinnules glaucous on underside. 
Kunze makes three species, viz. : — 
II. G. POLYPODIOIDES, Sm. 
12. G. glauca, Sw., with varieties 
13. G. argentea, Klf. 
f A. normalis. 
fB. nudiucscula. 
He remarks, however, that G. polypodioides appears to belong 
