specimens of lobatum approach very closely to Lonchitis, particularly
the variety named lonchitidoides, which is shown not to
be a young form of lobatum, but a distinct form by its hearing
fructification. When I had the pleasure of seeing the younger
Agardh in England, I mentioned to him my suspicion that
Lonchitis would be found to belong to the same species as lobatum,
aculeatum, and angtdare, when he informed me that it could not
be considered a mountain form of these, as I suspected, because
it was the most common species throughout the flat countries of
Sweden.”
Sadler sinks lobatum as a synonyme of aculeatum, not noticing
it as a variety, but he raises to the rank of a species, under the
name munitum, that variety of the lohate type which has “ the
frond pinnate, the pinnæ lineari-lanceolato-subfalcate, and pinnatifid
at the base.” I cannot doubt that this is the plant alluded
to by Mr. Babington as bearing the name of lonchitidoides, and
represented ante, page 39, fig. f .
In the Annals of Natural History, I find in some botanical
notes of a tour in Ireland by Mr. J. Ball, of Cambridge, a
passage so completely in accordance with the views I have
expressed, that I cannot resist the temptation to quote it. “ At
Colin Glen, a few miles from Belfast, in ascending from the
lower woody part of the glen to the rocks at the summit, the
botanist can scarcely fail to remark the gradual transition from a
very divided form of Aspidium angulare through the forms
named aculeatum and lobatum to one on the rocks above, which
cannot be distinguished from A. Lonchitis.”—Ann. Nat. Hist.
Vol. ii. p. 29.
A L P IN E PRICK LY FERN.
P o l y s t ic h u m L o n c h it i s .^— A l l t h e a u t h o r i t i e s a r e d o u b t f u l .
LOCALITIES.
E n g la n d .
Not decidedly W a l e s . ascertained.
S c o t l a n d , j
I r e l a n d . . . County Donegal, Rosses and Thanet Mountain P a s s ; County Sligo, Ben Bulben.
U n t i l my late visit to Ireland, I felt perfectly convinced that
the species Lonchitis and aculeatum were identical, that Lonchitis
was the young or seedling form of the plant prevented by
situation from acquiring its normal or perfect form, and that
aculeatum was the same plant in its normal or perfect form. I
traced the plant beyond all dispute from the simply pinnate frond
represented at page 40, to the more compound fronds f and e,
(page 39), and I not only found that the plant advanced from i
(page 40) to / (page 39), and from that again to e (page 39), but
I found that by reversing the treatment, it could be compelled to
retrograde, and reassume the simply pinnate form represented at
1i (page 39). •
In the Botanic Garden at Belfast I have since seen a plant of
a totally différent character : on this, long cultivation had produced
no trace of a similar effect—in fact, a contrary effect was
obvious, for it not merely bore the Lonchitis characters, but bore
them to an excess, and had departed further from any trace of
aculeatum character than any specimen of Lonchitis that I had
ever seen. I afterwards found the same plant in the College and
Glasnevin Botanic Gardens at Dublin, and in these also it
presented its peculiar characters with unvarying fidelity. I am
equally at a loss how to place this stubborn and unvarying plant
with aculeatum, the most Protean of all our species, and how to
give figures and assign characters to each, which shall clearly
distinguish it from the other.
The roots of the present plant are long, strong, black, and
wiry ; the rhizoma is thick, tufted, and scaly ; the fronds appear
'iff.
A