Descriptions of the Species. 
75 
Genus XI. — 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 distinguished by the 
anastomosing venation. 
27. Lonchitis pubescens. Willd. 
Plate XX. Lower pinna of nearly barren frond, natural size. 
Plate XXI. Part of fertile frond, natural size. 
Root stock suberect or procumbent, densely clothed with 
brown shining woolly tomentum, or shag. Roots very strong, 
wiry. Fronds three to four feet long, 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 dis- 
appears 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 abundantly fertile cut halfway to the mid-rid 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 variable in cutting, and 
in the amount of hairs on the frond ; and one form formerly held 
as a species under the name of L. glabra, Bory, is still mentioned 
as a variety in “ Syn. Fil.,” but the specimens I have seen do not 
seem to have characters for two forms, and Sanderson’s specimens 
in Herb. Gub. named L. glabra are as hairy as others. 
