Myriopteris tomentosa, FÉe, Gen. Fil., p. 149, t. xii., A., f. 2 (a pinnule).—Fournier, Pl. Mex., Crypt., p. 125 (species exclusa).

NotholÆna tomentosa, J. Smith.

Cheilanthes Bradburii, Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 97, t. cix., B.—Mettenius, Cheilanthes, p. 37.

Hab.—Sandstone rocks along the French Broad River, in North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, Professor Gray, Mr. Canby, Rev. D. R. Shoop, Professor Bradley, etc. Texas, Lindheimer, No. 743. Mountains of Virginia (?) and Kentucky, according to Gray’s Manual, but Mr. Williamson has hitherto failed to find it in the last named State. The Kew herbarium contains, besides Lindheimer’s plant, a very imperfect specimen marked “Manitou Rocks, 250 miles up the Missouri, Bradbury,” and good specimens from Texas collected by Drummond. Kunze states that it was raised [at the Leipzig garden?] from Mexican spores, and that Rugel collected a few specimens in North Carolina; but Fournier rejects it as a Mexican species.

Description:—This is decidedly the largest plant among all our North American species of Cheilanthes, some of the tallest specimens measuring nearly two feet in total length. The root-stock is short, and disposed to branch. It is thickly clad with fine subulate chaff, many of the scales with a dark and rigid midnerve, and others lighter-colored and without midnerve. The plant evidently grows in dense masses. The stalks are clustered, each root-stock sending up a large number of them. They are rigid, wiry, terete and covered with grayish-tawny spreading soft woolly hairs, intermixed with a few which are broader and decidedly paleaceous, especially towards the base. The section is round, and shows a firm exterior sclerenchymatous sheath, within which is a broad circle of brownish parenchyma, and in the middle a single fibro-vascular bundle obtusely triangular in shape, but with the sides slightly hollowed in.

The fronds vary from a few inches to over a foot in length; their general shape is ovate-lanceolate, or oblong-lanceolate; they are in general of a grayish color from the abundance of a fine entangled tomentum, which covers both surfaces, though it is a little thinner and whiter on the upper surface. The large fronds are fully tripinnate. The primary pinnÆ are oblong-ovate, short-stalked, one to nearly two inches long, and a half to three-fourths of an inch broad at the base. They are either opposite or alternate, the lower ones, as usual, more separated than those that are higher up on the frond. The secondary pinnÆ are close-placed, oblong, obtuse, and again pinnated into from two to five minute rounded or rounded-obovate sessile or adnate-decurrent pinnules on each side, besides a terminal oval pinnule which is twice as large as the lateral ones. These ultimate pinnules are innumerable, and it is in allusion to their very great number in this and the allied species that the generic name Myriopteris was proposed by FÉe for the group.

The whole margin of the pinnule is recurved, and from the edge of it is produced a very delicate whitish involucre, the whole forming a sort of pouch, as is admirably represented in the figure given by FÉe. The sporangia have a ring of about twenty articulations: FÉe says there are vittate or knotted hairs growing among them. The spores are rather large, amber-colored, globose, and delicately trivittate. According to FÉe, when placed in water they burst and dissolve into excessively minute sporules.

There can be no doubt that our plant is the Cheilanthes tomentosa of Link. Kunze, who knew Link’s plant perfectly well, referred the North Carolina specimens to it; and Dr. Mettenius, who succeeded to the care of the Leipzig garden, favored me with specimens which are precisely the same thing as the plant here described. But none of the Mexican collectors seem to have found the species, and it may be legitimately queried whether the commonly reported origin of Link’s specimens is the true one. The Cheilanthes tomentosa of the Species Filicum is partly this plant, but mainly the species next to be described.