u I
U ; I )
|L ' ' ' I!
\ i i "
M
l i l
Kl
I » •( '
V f * I : 'K
I I '7' '
r i :î i î
h
Il >
r
i . u
‘ 7 '!
Il
10 4 FERNS OF NORTH AMERICA.
Anemirhiza adiantifolia, J. S m it h , in Seemann’s Bot. Voy. “ Herald,’’
P- 243-
Osmunda Filicula: fo lio major, P l u m ie r , Fil. Amer., p . 1 3 5 , t. 15 8 .
Aneimia asplenifolia, S wa rt z , Syn. Fil., p. 157.
Aneimia caruifolia, P r e s l , R c l iq . Hank., i., p . 7 4 ; S u p p l. Tent., p . 8 5 , & c .
Hab. — Southern Florida, Biscayne Bay, Key West, &c. It is found
in one form or another in the West Indies, Mexico, Central and South
America, growing in pine woods, W r ig h t ; and on old ruins, A. S chott.
D e s c r i p t io n . — This fern has a terete creeping root-stock,
about the eighth of an inch in diameter, and several inches long,
covered with minute nearly black subulate chaff, composed of a
single series of cylindrical cells. The stalks arise in a single
scries from the upper side of the root-stock. The lower portion
of the stalk is dark-colored, and moderately pubescent with slender
brown articulated hairs ; but the upper part is much lighter,
and almost smooth. In large specimens from the West Indies
the stalk is a foot long; but in the Florida specimens it is several
inches shorter. The sterile fronds are placed on shorter stalks
than the fertile ones, as is very commonly the case in most genera
of ferns. The sterile fronds, and the sterile portion of the fertile
fronds, are triangular-ovate in shape, from four to eight or nine
inches long, and at the base about three-fourths as broad. They
are sub-coriaceous in texture, rather rigid, and more or less hairy
along the rachises and on the under side of the veins. The upper
surface has a striated appearance, and is glossy, but still bears a
few minute scattered hairs.
The sterile frond, or segment, is bipinnate in ordinary speciFERNS
OF n o r t h AMERICA.
mens, and tripinnate in very large ones. The pinnæ are pinnately
lobed or divided, and often have an acuminate apex, especially in
very large plants. The segments are lobed or not, according to
the size of the frond ; but the ultimate segments and lobes arc
rhomboid-ovate or obovate, — broadly or narrowly so in different
specimens, — the apex obtuse or barely acute, and always with a
few minute teeth. The veins are free and flabellately forking, so
that the lobes have no distinct mid-vein.
As in the Mexican Aneimia, so in this one, the fertile panicles
are long-stalked, and rise from the top of the stalk, just at
the base of the sterile portion of the frond. They are usually
twice pinnate, and have short pinnately-divided pinnules, the segments
of which are flattened, and bear two rows of acorn-shaped
sporangia provided with a terminal transverse apical ring, — the
characteristic of the sub-order to which the plant belongs. The
spores are roundish-tetrahedral, and have minute ridges on the
surface,- but not so well developed as those of the species last
described.
The Florida specimens are not very large, and belong to the
form figured by Hooker and Greville under the name of var.
aspleziifolia, having the sterile frond barely bipinnate, and the
divisions obtuse.
Authors have attempted to separate from the genus Aneimia
those few species which have anastomosing veins, and to make of
them the genus Aziemidictyon, and in like manner to place the
species which have the fertile fronds destitute of a foliaceous
sterile portion under the separate genus Coptophylhim ; but it
I
I i ,
ll .
A A
' ■(
f
| 7
( i
f i l - I
14
J " ■ W
, 1 1