Has. — In the axils of the old leaves of the palmetto, on the
hanks of the Caloosahatchie, South Florida, C hapman, Oct., 1875 ; J.
D on neu . S mith, March, 1878; Garber, August, 1878. Forks of Turkey
Creek, Indian River, Florida, F. A. W h it e , May and July, 1879, always
nesting in the old sheaths of leaves of the palmetto. Santo Domingo,
P lumier. Mauritius, M evrien. Southern Brazil, T w eed ie, “ growing in
the axils of the leaves of a species of palm.” Chinantla, Mexico, Ga l eo it i,
“ pendent on divers trees, and more rarely on moist schistose rocks.”
Tovar, Venezuela, Moritz, on dead trunks. Peru, Pcerpig. Brazil again,
S ellow. Cuba, C. W rig h t . Also near Manatee, Florida, Garber.
D e s c r i p t i o n ; — The root-.stock is not very unlike that of a
Trillium, being erect, a little longer than thick, about as large
as a hazel-nut, profusely rooting along its sides, and producing
a cluster of fronds at the top. Just below the fronds is a
ring of woolly hairs, which on examination prove to be the
long and entangled cilia of minute chaffy scales. This wool
IS ferruginous in dried specimens, but Plumier says it is
“ albissima." The roots are several inches long, half a line
to a line thick, and dichotomously branched. Sachs is uncertain
whether the branching of the roots of Ophioglossacece is
monopodia! or dichotomous. Here it is certainly the latter;—
m one instance a root is four times regularly dichotomous.
The number of fronds from one root-stock is said by Dr.
Garber to be sometimes more than twelve, but usually there
are from three to six. The stalks are from three to fifteen
inches long, round, fleshy and rather tough, but gradually
yielding to the weight of the frond, which is more or less
pendent according to its weight. The fibro-vascular bundles
are from six to twelve, slender, and placed in a circle beneath
the surface.
The frond is sometimes simple and lanceolate, a span
long or less, and six to twelve lines wide; but more commonly
it Is fan-shaped, cuneate at the base, and deeply lobed
into a variable number of tongue-shaped segments, oftenest
from three to six. Two examples have eleven segments. The
segments are from two to eight inches long, nearly or quite
an inch broad, obtuse or acute, and often forked at the tip;
one frond is forked at the middle of the stalk, and each of
the divisions forked with forking segments. No two fronds
are exactly alike, and in a large collection of specimens many
odd shapes appear.
The veins rise from the stalk, no one larger than the
others, and anastomose in elongated irregularly rhomboid or
hexagonal meshes, which often contain a simple or branched
veinlet entering from either the lower or the upper end of
the areole.
The spikes are one or two inches long, and have peduncles
a little shorter than themselves. They arise mostly from
the incurved edges of the frond just where it begins to widen
from the common stalk, sometimes from the stalk itself, and
rarely from the anterior or upper surface of the frond,
starting from a vein some, distance from the margin. The
peduncles contain one principal vein, and often an additional
veinlet or two. Occasionally a spike or its peduncle
! j
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