HYME NOPHY L L UM Wilsoni.
Wilson’s Filmy-Fern.
CRYPTOGAMIA Filices.
Gen. Char. Fructification marginal. Capsules on
a cylindrical receptacle, within a permanent two-
valved involucre, which is of the same texture as
the frond, opening outwards.
Spec. Char. Frond pinnate ; pinnae subunilateral or
recurved, wedge-shaped, abrupt, divided into
about four linear, erect, simple or forked, spinu-
loso-serrated segments. Involucres pedicellated,
axillary, ovate, inflated, entire.
Syn. Hymenophyllum Wilsoni. Hook. Brit. FI. 450.
So very different in aspect is this truly distinct species
from the far more elegant H . tunbridgense, that no botanist
who has had the good fortune to see them luxuriantly growing
in company, in the rocky woods which border the
wildly sequestered Upper Lake of Killarney, would hesitate
to pronounce them two species. It was there that, in the
summer of 1829, I first became acquainted with the true
H . tunbridgense, and had at once the gratification of clearing
up my doubts concerning the spurious kind, with which, as
the common Hymenophyllum of North Wales, Cumberland,
and Perthshire, I had long been imperfectly familiar,
and also of unexpectedly adding another Fern to the British
Flora. Hudson, who probably had seen and gathered
both kinds, does not notice this species as a variety; but
various botanists of modern times have suspected, though
they did not ascertain nor promulgate, the existence of two
British species; and amongst them the late Miss Hutchins
of Ballilickey, a lady ardently attached to botany and one