Flora of New Zealand Series

Rhizome stout, ascending, invested with bases of fallen stipites, clad in dark linear-acuminate paleae up to 5 mm. long; stipites numerous, tufted. Stipes stiff, wiry, erect or ascending, dark brown, shining, 1-10 cm. long, paleate at base, elsewhere nude or nearly so. Rhachis stiff, dark brown, very narrowly winged, with rather distant subopp. pinnae. Lamina linear, 5-30 cm. long, subcoriac., dark green. Pinnae subsessile by narrowed base, 30-40-(80); oblong to obovate-oblong, occ. auricled, crenate-serrate to subentire, obliquely cuneate at base; larger 5-12 × 3-5 mm.; veinlets obscure, pinnate, forked. Sori cop., oblique, often confluent and covering whole of under-surface, up to 3 mm. long; indusium firm.

DIST.: N., S. Coastal to subalpine open rocky ground from lat. 38º southwards, rather local in N. Subcosmopolitan, if interpreted in wide sense.

A. melanolepis Col. in T.N.Z.I. 20, 1888, 227 from "among crags on the summit of the high hill Pukekotuku, county of Hawke's Bay; 1859: W.C.; Petane Valley, north of Napier, same county: 1881, Mr. A. Hamilton." The type specimen in W ("Petane, June 1881, Mr. Hamilton") consists of three laminae with upper portions of stipites. Lamina 9-15 cm. long, rhachis slender; pinnae 40-60, the larger 7 × 3 mm., oblong to obovate-oblong. Colenso suggested it was possibly a hybrid with A. flabellifolium.