Art. XXXVIII.—A Description of four new Ferns from our New Zealand Forests

By William Colenso, F.L.S.

downwards; secondly, their pinnæ downwards and inwards towards the main rhachis; thirdly the pinnules downwards and inwards towards the secondary rhachises; and then, fourthly, the very fruiting segments themselves conniving inwardly:^*—the whole tout-ensemble being peculiar among our tree-ferns, and most graceful.

Owing to its many colours, its drooping compact shape, and its being much more of a dwarf (though stout) tree-fern than its congeners, fully bearing fruit when only five feet high, it wears a very peculiar and striking appearance (especially when looking down on it from a height a little above)—one that attracts the eye immediately.

I have long known this fern in its young and barren state; and I had always a suspicion that it was really distinct from C. dealbata; but Dr. Sir J. Hooker had so clearly stated that C. dealbata was our only tree-fern bearing “fronds” that were “white and glaucous below,” that I confess I have been for a considerable time thrown off my guard with respect to it. But during this last autumn, while botanizing in another and unvisited part of the Seventy-mile Bush, I fell in with several plants of this species, of various sizes and ages, and many of them bearing fruit in profusion, so I had ample means and opportunity for examination.

Hab. Deep forests (Seventy-mile Bush) on eastern outlying spurs of the Ruahine Mountain Range, between Norsewood and Danneverke villages; April, 1882.

II. Dicksonia, L'Héritier.

Dicksonia gracilis, n. sp.

Plant, arborescent; trunk 10–15 feet high, slender, greyish-brown; on upper portion remains of old stipites, and at top a few dead fronds hanging down; bearing young plants and shoots 2–3 feet from the base.

Fronds, 40 and upwards, sub-membranaceous, glabrous, 5–5½ feet long, 2–4 feet wide, tripinnate, oblong-lanceolate, patent, light-green above and lighter-green below, upper portion very free and loose not compact.

Stipes, 9–10 inches long, at first upright and inclined inwards towards trunk, sub-clasping, with a large quantity of loose light red-brownish hairs at bases, and a dense layer of lighter coloured hirsute tomentum adhering beneath; hairs, 1½ inch long, cylindrical, tapering, excessively fine towards top, straight and lax, shining as if varnished, regularly jointed, 6 joints to 1 line, semi-bulbous at base; stipes and rhachises dark-brown below, shining as if varnished, and thickly muricated throughout to apices of pinnæ with

Hab. In low-lying forests between Norsewood and Danneverke, “Seventy-mile Bush,” April, 1882.

III. Hymenophyllum, Smith.

Hymenophyllum megalocarpum, n. sp.

Plant terrestrial and epiphytical, sarmentose; rhizome glabrous; roots and rootlets densely villous with long red-brown spreading hairs.

Stipes, ½-2½ inches apart on rhizome, 2–4 inches long, generally much shorter than the frond, cylindrical, glabrous, glossy, stout, wiry, flexuose, red-brown, sometimes greenish.

Frond, tri-quadri-pinnatifid, deltoid or deltoid-acuminate, 3–4½ in. long, 3–4½ inches broad at base, sometimes slightly acuminate, upright or slightly decurved, spreading, membranous, semi-pellucid, light-green, glabrous, not shining, not elastic; pinnœ and pinnules crowded, imbricate; main rhachis and secondary rhachises red coloured, winged throughout; wings crisped; very young fronds slightly scaly below with red-brown wrinkled deciduous scales on stipes and rhachis; primary pinnules opposite, falcate, lowermost pair deflexed; secondary pinnules sub-opposite and alternate, sub-secund, falcate, cuneate below, very thickly set, overlapping, outermost free.

Segments, or lobes, regular, narrow, linear, 1–3 lines long, width under ½ line, obtuse, entire, plane, terminal sometimes forked, very rarely elongate; veins prominent.

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Involucres on lateral segments, very large, much wider than segments, 1/12 - ⅛ inch wide at widest part, divided down to base, turgid, open, spreading and recurved, obconical, semi-elliptic, deltoid, and suborbicular, sometimes twice the size of the clusters of sori, entire, emarginate, sometimes slightly crenulate at apex, often geminate, sometimes two from one vein, and sometimes even three together.

Sori in large rotund clusters and coloured red, prominent, exserted, sometimes two clusters within one involucre; capsules very large, convex, glossy.

This species of Hymenophyllum is (as I take it) a striking and interesting novelty; owing to its large clusters of richly-coloured sori, and their still larger and spreading involucres or involucral leaves,—in their manner of growth almost resembling those of a small cabbage or lettuce around its heart,—and also with (in some places) its twin clusters of sori within one involucre, and arising from a single vein. I know of nothing like it among our many and varied species of Hymenophyllum; although this species is not so large as several of the New Zealand species of this genus, its clusters of sori and involucres are the largest that I know,—larger than those of H. scabrum and H. dilatatum. Its affinities, however, (though slight), are with the old well-known and

common species H. demissum and H. polyanthos, and with the new one H. erecto-alatum, particularly this last, and had its stipes been winged, and the wings there and on its rhachises subvertical and deeply crisped, as in H. erecto-alatum, I should have been inclined to have set it down as a variety of that species, notwithstanding its extra-large and peculiar involucres and sori. Apparently the smaller the frond the more profuse its sori, which in some small specimens is densely thick and heavy, and then contracting the whole frond. Its clusters of sori are also coloured bright-red when very young, long before they become mature.

Hab. In open woods, in the Seventy-mile Bush between Norsewood and Danneverke, both on the ground (but not growing thickly) and climbing trees—particularly the trunks of the tree-ferns, arborescent Dicksoniœ— 1881, 1882.

IV. Asplenium
Linn

Asplenium anomodum, n. sp.

Plant small, suberect, spreading; caudex very short and stout, scarcely any; stipites thickly tufted, 1–2½ inches long, rather slender, green, densely clothed at base with very large reticulated glossy black scales; roots fibrous, not long, compact, numerous, brown, thickly covered with short shining hairs; fronds, 4–6 (living ones) to each plant, 2–4½ inches long, 1½ inches broad, ovate-acuminate, pinnate, with a long terminal obtuse pinna subrhomboid-lanceolate, about 2 inches long or twice the length of the largest of the lateral pinnæ, with sometimes a small lobe at the base; pinnœ, 3–4 pairs, petiolate, distant, patent, alternate, rarely subopposite, 6–14 lines long, 3–6 lines broad, ovate, sometimes broadly elliptic, dimidiate, obtuse and rounded at apex, generally decreasing in size from the middle of the frond downwards; the base cuneate and excised below, and truncate and subauricled above; colour grass green, a shade lighter below; margins cartilaginous, coloured, aud bluntly serrated, often only crenulate; petioles slender; texture membranaceous, glabrous above, scaly below on the veins with scattered long fine dark and scarious scales, having divaricating laciniæ at base (almost stellate), similar in texture to those at base of stipites, only very much smaller; veins apparent, subflabellate, simple, and forked, with no distinct costa, subclavate at apices and not extending to margin; rhachis slender, narrow, channelled above, and (with stipe) scaly, with long twisted dark scarious scales like those on veins of frond.

Sori generally few, distant, scattered, and very irregularly distributed, 1, 2, or 3 (and sometimes, though rarely, 5, 6) on a pinna, occasionally more, 8–18, on the terminal pinna; at first long, afterwards broad-elliptic,