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D e s c r i p t i o n ; — This compaiatively little-known fern is
one of those ambiguous species which might find its place
in either Cheilanthes or Pellæa with about equal propriety.
Hooker, who gave the earliest account of it, and illustrated
it with an excellent figure, placed it in the former genus,
and in his section " Pteridoideæ,” and next to Ch. canes-
cens and Ch. candata, species scarcely known to himself at
that time. Baker, in continuing Synopsis Filicum, removed
it to Pellæa, together with Cheilanthes Alabamensis and
Ch. intraniarginalis, probably because of the continuous
involucres.
The root-stock, in the specimen available for the present
description, is about the thickness of a crow's quill, and
scarcely more than an inch long. Near the growing end it
is forked into two short nearly equal branches. It is covered
with very narrow long-pointed entire scales of a ferruginous
color, most of them so thickened and deeply colored along
the middle as to form a very decided midnerve.
The stalks are a few inches long and about half a line
thick, blackened, and covered at the very base with brownish
chaff, which is replaced along the rest of the stalk and the
rachis with fine pale-cinereous appressed paleaceous hairs. The
stalk-section is round, and shows a thick outer sclerenchymatous
sheath and a somewhat butterfly-shaped central fibro-
vascular bundle.
The fronds are lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate in outline,
rather wider in the middle than at the basc, and gradually
narrowed to an acute apex. The texture is subcoriaceous, and
the color, when fresh, probably a rather pale sliade of green.
The secondary rachises are a little scaly as well as paleaceous-
pubescent. The pinnæ are short-stalked, triangular-ovate or
triangular-lanceolate in outline, the largest ones about an inch
long and half an inch wide, and composed of three or four
pairs of pinnules besides the terminal one. The basal pinnules
are often three-lobed or broadly hastate, and obscurely
petiolulate, the rest sessile by a broad base, oblong-ovate,
two or three lines long, and often slightly auricled on one
or both sides of the base, the uppermost ones not separated
but confluent with the triangular-ovate terminal segment.
The whole upper surface is harsh and roughened with minute
tubercles which are tipped with short, rigid, simple or forked
or three-branched whitish hairs. Hooker says : — “ This has a
good deal the habit and general appearance of Cheilanthes
canescens of Kunze, and has as much claim to be placed in
the genus as that species, the continuous involucre being
however that of Pteris or Allosorus {Pelloea.\ Our plant is
much more delicate and graceful, the stipes and main rachises
ebeneous, the primary pinnæ again truly pinnate. But
the remarkable character exists in the transversely waved
margin of the fertile pinnæ and segments, and the harsh, rigid,
simple or bi- and sometimes tri-partite white hairs seen on
the ridges, especially, of the undulations. It is assuredly a
very distinct and new species.” The transverse undulations
are not always very clear, and are possibly due to contraction
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