By Willard N. Clute.

In the identification of fern species one occasionally comes upon two forms so nearly alike that it requires very careful study to decide whether they are two different species or merely two forms of a single variable species, but it is rare that one finds a fern that can as well be placed in one genus as another, and still more rare when the species possesses characters so like those of ferns in other groups that it may be moved from one tribe to another without violating any of the botanical properties. The fern chosen for illustration here is one of this latter character. It has been passed back and forth between various genera in different tribes, seldom resting long in one place, until it is a very problematical species indeed.

In outline and manner of growth it possesses no especial peculiarities. The lanceolate leaves might fit any of a dozen or more species that might be mistaken for it if the fruit dots or sori were absent. Vittaria, Taemitis, Antrophyum, Polypodium, Asplenium, Acrostichum and many other genera have species with leaf outlines that almost exactly match it, but a glance at the fruiting fronds, at once excludes many of these genera as possible harbors for the species and at the same time increases the difficulties of finally placing it. The sori are apparently linear and Scolopendrium or Asplenium comes to mind, but there is no indusium and so the relationship is thrown into that group of ferns clustering about such forms as Gymnogramma.

In fact, our fern was for a long time known as Gymnogramma lanceolata and owing to this fact I have selected this to stand as the name of the plant. A glance at the illustration, however, will disclose a frond not at all like the conventional Gymnogramma frond, but it is as much like a Gymnogramma as it is like the family to which the plant is now assigned. Curious as it may seem this plant with elongated sori oblique to the midrib is now regarded as a Polypodium! Before its settling down in this genus, it had been placed in Antrophyum, Grammitis, Loxogramme and Selliguea as well as Gymnogramma. This is by no means due to the variable nature of the fern. Through all these vicissitudes it has remained unchanged. The fluctuations from one genus to another even from one tribe to a different one, have been due to the varying opinions of mere man and his efforts to fit the fern to a set of descriptions of his own making. Circumstances such as these are quite sufficient to justify the refusal to accept off-hand the results of every “revision” which ambitious systematists see fit to inflict upon us.

While reposing in the genus Gymnogramma, the fern was well-known to be somewhat unorthodox. In every large assemblage of species there are, in addition to those which are typical, certain others that diverge somewhat, but not enough to form a separate genus. Thus our plant was placed in the section Selliguea. Sometimes, indeed, Selliguea was isolated as a separate genus, but usually accompanied by the statement that if it were not for the shape of the sorus it would make a good addition to the section Phymatodes of Polypodium. Here, at least, is where it has landed, the elongated sori being winked at, possibly, or perhaps the species makers are willing to assume each so-called sorus to be a series of Polypodium sori. In this age, however, there are those who deny to the species in the group Phymatodes the right to be included in Polypodium and in certain books our species appears as Phymatodes loxogramma. Just how this loxogramme came to supplant lanceolata is another story, not to be detailed here. Suffice to say that the new name was picked up during one of the fern’s numerous transfers.

As to Phymatodes, it is likely that the species in this group are distinct enough to form a genus by themselves but it would be a rash student to encourage such a departure, for once started we should soon see all the large genera cut up into lesser groups and then what delightful times the name-tinker would have!

By what ever name called, the species manages to thrive over a wide stretch of country in the Eastern Hemisphere, being found from Japan and China to the Himalayas, Ceylon and the Guinea Coast and represented in many of the islands of the Pacific including Fiji and Samoa. The specimen from which the illustration was made was collected by K. Miyake near Kyoto, Japan where it is reported “not so common.”