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F E R N S OF NORTH AM E R IC A .
Jacinto Mountains, San Diego County, W m. S tout. Specimens exist in
the collection of plants made in California by Dr. Bigelow,' while engaged ,
in Lieut. W hip ple ’s survey for a Railroad route to the Pacific Ocean,
but are not referred to in the Botany of his Report.
D e s c r i p t i o n ;— This little woolly fern grows in dense tufts,
probably in very dry and exposed places among the rocks,
where it has to endure great heat and long-continued drought.
The root-stocks are evidently combined into masses of considerable
extent. When disentangled, a root-stock is found to
be scarcely an inch long, and, with its covering of stalk-bases
and chaff, about two lines in thickness. The chaff, which is
also found on the bases of the stalks, consists of very narrow
entire slender-pointed rather rigid scales, in general of a
light cinnamon-brown, but nearly always provided with a very
narrow, but definite, midnerve of so dark a hue as to be
almost black. This midnerve is frequently somewhat interrupted,
and never extends quite to the apex of the scale.
The stalks are clustered, very slender, terete, wiry, blackish
brown, very minutely striated, and pubescent with spreading
pointed white hairs having one or two joints near the
middle. Mixed with these hairs are some that are shorter
and appressed ; also a few sessile glands. Microscopic examination
of the stalk shows a heavy outer sheath of blackish
scierenchyma, and a central fibro-vascular bundle, somewhat
V-shaped in its section. After the pinnæ have fallen from
' The specimens were detected in Prof. Gray’s herbarium by Mr. Davenport, who
obtained permission to detach a little portion for my examination.
P E R N S OF NORTH AM E R IC A . 2 1 I
the rachis, or the fronds from the stalks, the latter remain
on the root-stock for a year or two before, they fall off or
decay.
The fronds are oblong-lanceolate or oblong-ovate in outline,
from very small in young plants up to five inches long
in the largest I have seen. Their general color is greenish-
white above and ferruginous-white beneath, the whiteness
being due to the heavy covering of slender-pointed entangled
hairs which cover both surfaces, but the lower surface more
thickly. This wool is much coarser and longer than in N.
Newberryi, and considerably coarser than in Cheilanthes lanuginosa,
to which the present fern bears a very close resemblance,
and for which it was at first mistaken. In a frond
of full size there are seven or eight pairs of pinnæ, the
lowest ones nine or ten lines long, five or six lines broad,
and distant from the next pair by an interval of a full
inch. Succeeding pinnæ are nearer together, rather narrower
and longer, and the upper ones, again are smaller and smaller,
and crowded very closely together.
The pinnæ are twice pinnate, the pinnules set very close
together, and scarcely visible through the woolly covering.
When denuded of this they are found to be very small,
usually less than a line long, roundish-ovate, and crenately-
incised or crenate. The upper ones are less distinct, and the
uppermost are confluent with the terminal segment. They
have the outer margin very slightly recurved, but never
enough so to cover the sporangia, which are placed, three or
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