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I-Ia b . — Clefts and ledges of rocks, from the Island of New York westward
to Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas, and southward to the Carolinas and
Georgia.
D e s c r i p t i o n . — Root-stocks creeping, much matted and
entangled, and sometimes forming large tufts. They are nearly
as thick as a goose-quill, and are densely covered with amber-
brown, linear-acuminate, ciliate-toothed scales. Stalks from three
to six inches long, wiry, dark-brown or blackish, moderately polished,
and, like the rachis, hirsute with variously directed light
rusty-brown jointed hairs. These hairs are mostly fine-pointed,
and are composed of three, four, or five joints, with very evident
articulations. The fronds are usually six to eight inches long,
and one to one and a half inches wide, but are occasionally larger,
and very often considerably smaller, than these dimensions : in
outline they are narrowly oblong or oblong-lanceolate ; and they
are bipinnate, or, in large plants, nearly tripinnate. The texture
is herbaceous ; and the surfaces, especially the lower surface, are
hirsute with rusty hairs like those of the stalks and rachis. The
pinnæ are mostly opposite, the lower two or three pairs more distant
than the upper ones, triangular-ovate, sessile, or nearly so ;
pinnules of similar shape, and crenately incised, or, in larger
fronds, pinnatifid with crenated lobes, the lobes rounded at the
ends. In young fertile fronds the ends of the lobes are narrowly
recurved, so as to cover the sporangia, forming an obscure herbaceous
involucre ; but, as the sporangia ripen, this is pushed back,
and the lobes at length appear quite flat. The general color of
the frond is a dull green, shaded with rusty-brown.
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Michaux’s name, Nephrodmm lanosum, is undoubtedly the
first published of the various names for this fern, as a comparison
of the dates will show. But I can scarcely agree with
Mr. Baker "to take up the oldest specific name independent
of genus.” The generic name is the “ nomen substantivumj the
specific name only an adjective; and I should decidedly prefer
to retain in use the first reasonably appropriate published name
under which any species was correctly referred to its true genus.
Moreover, I think the usage of many of the most distinguished
systematists — for instance, the De Candolles, both the Hookers,
Bentham, Gray, &c. — will be found to sustain this preference.
Usually it is well to keep the oldest specific name when
it is known ; but there is no absolute law requiring i t ; and to
endeavor to replace well-known specific names by older, but
obscurer ones, is surely reprehensible.
The station on Manhattan Island, on rocks with an eastern
exposure, near Fort Tryon, is the most northern known, and
was discovered in 1866 or 1867 by the late Mr. W. W. Denslow.
The species was also collected on Snake Hill, in Hackensack
Swamp, N.J., by Dr. F . J . Bumstead, in 1865.
Plate II., the upper figure, represents a single rather large frond of
Cheilanthes vestita, with the root-stock, &c. On the right are figures of a
fruiting pinnule enlarged, and of one of the jointed Iralrs highly magnified.
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