Diplopterygium bancroftii (Hook.) A. R. Sm.

Dicranopteris bancroftii (Hook.) Underw. Bull. Torrey
Club 34: 252. 1907.
Gleichenia Bancroftii Hook. Sp. Fil. 1 : 5. 1844. Mertensia Bancroftii Kunze, Linnaea 18 : 307. 1844. Gleichenia Brunei Christ, Bull. Herb. Boiss. II. 5: 13. 1905. Dicranopteris Brunei Underw. Bull. Torrey Club 34 : 253. 1907.
Rhizome creeping, epigeous or somewhat subterranean, flexuous, up to 6 mm. in diameter, muricate, sparingly covered with brownish to light-cast an ecus lanceolate long-acuminate scales up to 7 mm. long, glabrescent ; primary leaf-axis stout, about 5 mm. in diameter, stramineous, naked, or at the base brownish and somewhat scaly, bearing a pair of large bipinnate pinnae, axial growth sometimes continued from the included bud, a second and third pair of primary pinnae thus produced in acropetal succession ; terminal (axial) bud large, up to 2 cm, long, densely clothed with whitish to dull-yellowish ovate to deltoid -lanceolate entire long-acuminate scales ; pinnae determinate, oblong, 1-1.5 m. long, 30-50 cm. broad, acuminate, the rachis stout, smooth, up to 4 mm. in diameter, delicately bicarinate above ; pinntdes very numerous, normally inserted 2-3 cm. apart, approximate or slightly imbricate (rarely much smaller, congested, 1-1.5 cm. apart, closely overlapping), divergent, sessile, linear, 15-25 cm. long, 3^.5 cm. broad, cut to the costa ; costa stramineous, with a few deciduous slender deeply laciniate or filiform yellowish scales; segments rigidly herbaceous, very brittle, numerous, linear-Hgulate, 1.5-2.25 cm. long, about 2,5 mm. broad, mostly adnate and decurrent (or the lowermost unequally constricted, subsessile), green or yellowish-green, glabrous or nearly so, glaucous below, the costule conspicuously elevated, stramineous, glabrescent ; veins apart, once-forked near the base, the branches widely divergent ; sori inframedial, seated upon the anterior branch, 3-5-sporangiate, a tuft of small filiform yellowish scales beneath.
Type locality : Jamaica.
Distribution : Jamaica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique ; on the continent extending from Mexico to Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, mainly at altitudes of from 1000 to 1800
meters.