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Myriopieris Lindheimeri, J. S mith, Bot. Voy. Herald, p. 240.— F ournier,
PL Mex., Crypt., p. 125.
H ab. — Western Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, probably in
crevices of exposed rocks, F. L ind iie im er , W right, K ing , Pai.m er,
R othrock. Also in the Sierra Madre of Mexico (S eemann) , and near
San Luis Potosi, Parry & Palmer, N o. 999.
D e s c r i p t i o n ; — This little fern has a slender root-stock
about one line in thickness, and several inches long. It is
covered with appressed or slightly spreading chaffy scales
which are a little more than a line in length, ovate, acute,
ciliate at the apex when whole, ferruginous-brown in color,
and provided with a rather broad but not well-defined mid-
nerve or central space in which the cells are filled with a
deep-resinous-colored coloring matter.
The stalks are slender, terete, wiry, nearly black, and at
length shining. They bear a few ferruginous scales at the
base, but for the greater part of their length are, when young,
chaffy with very thin and pale linear-lanceolate slender-pointed
denticulated scales mixed with minute paleaceous hairs. A
transverse section shows that the exterior sheath of sclerenchymatous
tissue is very thick and hard, and that the solitary
fibro-vascular bundle, as in many of the related species, is
transversely oval with a deep indentation on the anterior side,
or, as termed in previous parts of this Avork, butterfly-shaped.
The fronds are about as long as the stalks, and ovate-
lanceolate in general shape. One of the largest seen measures
a little over four inches in length and about an inch and a
half ill breadth. Such fronds are fully quadripinnate. The
primary pinnæ are placed closer together than in C. Fendleri,
are ovate-oblong in shape, nearly sessile, and diverge from
the rachis at an angle of about sixty degrees. The secondary
and tertiary pinnæ and the ultimate pinnules are compacted
very densely; the latter are very minute, mostly about one-
fourth of a line in diameter, rounded, sub-sessile, and either
entire or so deeply lobed as to be almost divided into three
similarly rounded or slightly pyriform segments. The outer
margin is so revolute as to make them almost pouch-like.
The veins are forked and only two or three to a pinnule.
The whole under surface of the frond is densely clothed with
imbricated ferruginous scales, which are very delicate in texture,
ovate with very long and slender acuminations, and ciliate
with long and curling hairs, especially at the base. On the
pinnules these scales become very narrow, and at last have
no perceptible central portion, but consist of slender branching
hairs which are much entangled and constitute a heavy tomentum.
The upper surface is webby with similarly branching
white and exceedingly delicate hairs, having 110 evident articulations.
When the frond is very old this webbiness partly
wears off, while the color of the scales of the lower surface
gradually becomes much deeper.
The sporangia arc very few to each pinnule, and are
entirely hidden beneath the scaly and woolly covering. The
ring is composed of about twenty joints. The spores are very
II;
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