ably in September, 1807, though he does not allude to it in his journal.
There are now several stations known for it in the Green Mountains
and in the Catskills, the latest one among the Catskills having been
recently discovered by Misses M a r y and C a r o l in e R e d f i e l d , some fifteen
miles west of Kaaterskill Clove. Var. scopulinum was collected
in the Upper Teton Canon in Eastern Idaho, and has been found in
the Sierra Nevada by Mrs. E. C. K n o x . Varieties lobatum, angulare
and B ra u n ii are well known European forms, and if all the plants
referred to this species by Hooker really belong to it, it may be said
to be distributed throughout nearly all parts of the world.
D e s c r i p t i o n : — The root-stock is stout, erect or asstir-
gent, becoming somewhat woody with age, and is in great
part composed of the adherent and closely imbricated stalk-
bases of former fronds. The stalk is seldom over a foot
long, except in var. Californicum, in which it sometimes attains
fifteen inches of length. In var. B rau nii it measures
only two to four inches. The fresh stalk is roundish with
the anterior side flattened: it contains four or five fibro-
vascular bundles arranged in a semicircle, the two lateral
bundles much larger than the others. In all forms of the
species the stalk is very chaffy, especially at the base, where
the scales are large, ovate-acuminate, and obscurely ciliate-
toothed, intermixed with much smaller and slenderer scales and
fine paleaceous hairs. In all our forms the chaff is rather
thin, and of a clear ferruginous .brown, much paler, of course,
in young fronds. In some of the European forms the largest
scales are darker; and in the plants of tropical regions and
M \
F E R N S OF NORTH AM E R IC A . 127
the southern hemisphere, which are considered by many botanists
to form several distinct species, the scales are often
very rigid, and nearly black in color. The chaffiness extends
along the rachis and its divisions, often abundantly, but in
smaller and smaller scales, and so passes into the fibrils
which are always found on the lower surface of the frond,
and not rarely on the upper surface also. The fronds arc in
general lanceolate; in var. Brau nii conspicuously narrowed at
the base, in the other forms more or less so, or even a trifle
broadest at the base in var. angulare. The pinnæ are numerous,
and are usually lanceolate from a base Avhich is widened
on the upper side. . The degree of incision varies much in the
different forms, as indicated in the characters assigned to the
several varieties here recognized. Var.' Californicum has much
the look of A . munitum, though with more deeply incised
pinnæ; but between it and var. lobatum there occur so many
intermediate forms, that I can no longer consider it specifically
distinct. In var. lobatum I include, as did Kunze and
Milde, the forms which have been considered typical aculeatum
and var. lobatum by many authors, for the difference is
only that usually seen between the fronds of mature and
younger plants. The former, again, passes by insensible gradations
into Willdenow’s A . angulare, in which the greater
part of the pinnules are distinctly auricled and rest on short
foot-stalks. I hâve some doubt about the plant here named
var. scópulinuni, as it differs more from all the rest than any
of them do from each other. It ,has a little the habit of
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