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laginoLis margin. The veins are very numerous and once or
twice forked. Fertile fronds have narrower pinnæ and a continuous
whitish erosely denticulate involucre occupying both
margins. The sporangia are accompanied by numerous articulated
hairs or paraphyses, which Milde says are in place of
a true indusium. The spores are somewhat three-cornered,
faintly trivittate, and have raised reticulating ridges over the
whole surface.
Agardh describes six varieties of this fern, the differences
being mostly in the base of the pinnæ, whether subcordate
or auriculate, in the smooth or paleaceous stalk and rachis,
and in the more or less serrate sterile pinnæ ; forms which
have been described by various authors as species, but which
afford no constant distinctions: — indeed, as Agardh remarks,
the several forms do not come from different places, but the
most different grow together in any native land of the species.
Pteris longifolia has been cultivated at Kew since 1770,
and is now one of the commonest species seen in the conservatories
of tropical ferns.
Plate LX X V III .— Fig . 1-4 . Pteris longifolia, from Florida. Fig.
2 is an enlarged portion of a fertile pinna. P'ig. 3 is a smaller part
of the same still more magnified, so as to show the sporangia and
the paraphyses seated on the marginal receptacle. Fig. 4 is a spore.
Plate LX X V III . — F ig . 5-7.
P T E R IS S E R R U L A T A , L in n æ u s , F i l .
Se rru late o r Chinese B ra k e .
P t e r i s s e r r u l a t a : — Root-stock creeping, rather stout;
stalks densely clustered, slender, smooth, stramineous, a few
inches to a foot long; fronds membranaceous, smooth, ovate in
outline, six to fifteen inches long, bipinnatifid; rachis winged
often to the base of the frond ; pinnæ lanceolate or linear,
the terminal one very much elongated, the next lower pairs
simple, the lowest ones once or even twice pinnatisect with
a few distant segments, the terminal ones always longest;
margins of the sterile fronds sharply serrate but not cartilaginous;
involucres whitish, very long and continuous, the
edge entire ; sporangia without paraphyses.
Pteris serrulata. L in n æ u s , F il, “ Suppl., p. 4 2 5 , excl. syn.”— S w a r t z ,
Syn. Fii., p. 9 7 .—S c h k u h r , Krypt. Gew., p. 8 5 , t. 9 1 .— W il l d
e n ow , Sp. PL, V., p. 3 7 3 .— A g a r d h , Recensio Gen. Pterid.,
p. 1 3 .— H o o k e r , Sp. F il, ii., p. 1 6 7 .— MErrENius, Fil. Hort.
Lips., p. 5 6 .— B e n th am , FL Hongkong., p. 4 4 8 .— M iq u e l ,
■Prolusio Fl. Japon., p. 1 7 2 .— H o o k e r & B a k e r , Syn. F i l , p.
1 5 5 .— D a v e n p o r t , Catal, p. 1 8 .— E a t o n , in Bulletin of Torr.
' Botan. Club, vi., p. 307.
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