The Philippine journal of science. [Vol. 67, no. 1]

67, 1

Copeland: Genera Hymenophyllacearum

69

defined in the Corollarium Genera Plantarum (and, teste Underwood, in Hortus Cliffortianus, also dated 1937): "Calyx
turbinatus, solitarius, erectus, ex ipso margine folii. Stylus
setaceus capsulam terminans." No species is mentioned, but
reference is made to Plumier 4 for an illustration. This is
Trichomanes crispum. As Linneus's generic concept finds its
first expression here, and no other species is mentioned or referred to, this species must be accepted as the type species of
the genus.
The genus typified by this species may be a small but natural
one, pinnatifid or simply pinnate, mostly bearing long, soft hairs,
with rather close veins tending to be parallel, restricted to the
American Tropics, being then Presl's section Achomanes, van
den Bosch's and Prantl's genus Ptilophyllum; or it can be a
much larger, still natural, genus, including a number of such
more or less definable groups, and found in all moist tropical
and most warm-temperate regions. I use it in the former sense
and diagnose it accordingly:
Typically terrestrial American ferns; fronds typically uniform,
pinnatifid to pinnate in plan, false veinlets rarely present, and
then between and parallel to the veins, lamina one cell thick
except immediately along veins; involucre obconic to cylindric,
the mouth truncate to expanded, but not valvate or bilabiate,
receptacle slender and protruding; sporangia rather small, and
with a limited number of wall cells.
That T. crispum is not congeneric with T. scandens L., T. radicans Sw., and T. pyxidiferium L. has been the belief of nearly
every author who undertook to break the huge group called
Trichomanes in the general treatises on ferns into smaller, natural genera. By the principles of the typification of genera now
generally accepted, van den Bosch and Prantl erred in keeping
the name for the larger, more primitive, cosmopolitan group of
T. radicans, and introducing a new name, Ptilophyu11m, for Trichomanes as properly typified. To this extent they had justification, that they left in Trichomanes the larger number of species. If, however, they had observed any rule at all, they would
have adopted, for the group including T. crispurn, Presl's name
Ragatelus, based on the nearly related T. crinitum, in spite of
the fact that Presl erected the genus on an erroneous figure and
without seeing the plant. Presl based Cephalomanes on an
equally baseless or imaginary character; but van den Bosch re4 Fil. 86.