Studies in the Phylogeny of the Filicales. 
V. Cheiropleuria bicuspis (Bl.), Presl, and certain other 
related Ferns. 
BY 
F. O. BOWER, Sc.D., F.R.S. 
Regius Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow. 
With Plates XXIV and XXV and nineteen Figures in the Text. 
HE Fern which now passes under the name of Cheiropleuria bicitspis 
JL (BL), Presl, was first noted by Blume in 1828 (Fil. Jav., p. 125, and FI. 
Jav. ii. 175 , Tab. LXVIII, B). He referred it to Polypodium, as P. bicuspe , 
Bl. It was subsequently described and figured by Sir William Hooker in 
the London Journal of Botany, vol. v, p. 193 (1846), with Plates VII and 
VIII. His specimens were collected by Thomas Lobb for Mr. Veitch, 
in the mountain tops of Java, and Sir William Hooker designated it as 
a splendid new species of an Acrostichoid Fern, ranking it with the genus 
Gymnopteris , Bernhardi, as G. vespertilio. But in 1849 it was constituted the 
sole representative of a new genus, Cheiropleuria , by Presl. It will be seen 
from what follows that it is properly ranked as the only known species 
of a substantive genus, and that the references to Acrostichum and Poly- 
podium would only be possible in the older and most extended sense 
of those genera. 
The Fern is rather widely distributed in the Malayan region. It 
is recorded from Malacca, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Borneo, the 
Philippines, South Annam, Formosa, and it even extends beyond the tropic 
to Oshima, the northernmost of the Loo Choo Islands (Christ, Geogr. der 
Fame, p. 164). It is moreover especially worthy of remark that it is com¬ 
monly associated with Dipteris conjugata. This identity of distribution 
in Ferns which bear such a similarity as will be shown below, may probably 
be more than a mere coincidence. 
After more than one unsuccessful attempt to obtain supplies of 
material for the examination of this peculiar Fern, which has never yet 
been submitted to anatomical and developmental study, Professor Bayley 
Balfour kindly passed on my wish for specimens to the Rajah of Sarawak. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXIX. No. CXVI. October, 1915.] 
