2 lO 
Bower . — Ophioglossuni simplex , Ridley. 
margins. Proceeding up the leaf the ring flattens, and as the margins 
of the lamina become defined strands pass right and left from the ring ; 
the circular series thus becomes broken up into the supply for the sterile 
lamina on the one hand, and the supply for the spike on the other. The 
latter consists of five or more strands, with their xylems directed abaxially, 
while the strands of the former are more numerous, and have their xylems 
directed adaxially (Fig. 5). Occasional connexions are found higher up, 
between the strands of the two systems, after their separation. The 
vascular supply of the spike may thus be held to be mainly, though not 
always exclusively, a product of marginal branching from the original 
vascular supply of the leaf-base, as in Euophioglossum. 
Prantl’s section Cheiroglossa , including only O. palmatum , is described 
as having ‘ petioli fasciculi numerosi.’ The following observations on their 
relations to the spikes were made on a specimen sent to me by Mr. Fawcett 
from Jamaica. Transverse sections about the middle of the stalk show the 
vascular strands arranged, as in O. pendulum , in a ring, with their xylems 
directed centrally : they number about fifteen, and are of very variable 
size. Material was wanting for tracing the system downwards into the 
axis. Following it upwards no marked change took place at first, there 
being no obvious distinction of those strands which will enter the spikes till 
immediately below their insertion. Where the spikes are large, as in my 
leaf from Jamaica, and apparently also in that investigated by Professor 
Bertrand 1 ) a number of strands enter each spike. Immediately below the 
insertion of the lowest spike, though even the outline of the section shows 
where the stalk of the spike will be inserted, the ring of strands in the 
leaf-stalk remained undisturbed (Fig. 14) ; further up the ring opened, and 
with sundry branchings, four strands — subsequently reduced by fusion 
to three — passed out into the spike. Here as in other Ophioglossaceae 
the vascular supply appears to originate from both margins of the parent 
leaf, and not from one margin only (Figs. 14, 15, 16). The ring of strands 
in the leaf-stalk having thus opened, it did not again close (Fig. 17), but 
flattened out with the flattening expansion of the lamina into a wide 
arc ; and in the leaf in question the vascular supply for the higher spikes 
came off from the margins of the arc, as shown in Figs. 18 to 23 (compare 
Bertrand’s Fig. 97, 1 . c.). 
In those specimens of O. palmatum where the spikes are numerous and 
small, their vascular supply appears to be only a single strand ; this origin- 
ates as a branch from one of the vascular strands, which may subsequently 
take a course distinctly intra-marginal in the lamina 2 . 
The characteristics of the vascular arrangements in the appendages 
1 Travaux et Memoires de l’Univ. de Lille, Tome x, p. 189, Fig. 97. 
2 Compare Studies in the Morphology of Spore-producing Members. II. Ophioglossaceae, 
PI. VIII, Figs. 120, 121 ; PI. IX, Figs. 126, 127. 
