TRIFOLIATE CLIFF-BRAKE.
CLAYTON’S CLIFF-BRAKE.
SLENDER CLIFF-BRAKE.
PELLÆA TERNIFOLIA, Link.
Trifoliate Cliff-Brake.
Pellæa ternifolia:—Root-stock short, thick, nodose, chaffy with very narrow dark-brown scales; stalks clustered, purplish-black and polished, three to six inches long; fronds as long as or longer than the stalks, oblong-linear; pinnæ from four to fifteen pairs, all but a few of the highest ones deeply tripartite; segments elongated-oval or linear-obovate, sub-coriaceous, somewhat glaucous beneath, green above, slightly mucronate, the middle one in large fronds indistinctly petiolulate; fertile ones with the edges much recurved; involucre broad, the edge only membranaceous.
Pellæa ternifolia, Link, Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 59.—Fée, Gen. Fil., p. 129.—Hooker, Sp. Fil., i., p. 142; Fil. Exot., t. xv.—Fournier, Pl. Mex., Crypt., p. 118.—Eaton, Ferns of the Southwest, p. 321.
Pteris ternifolia, Cavanilles, “Præl. 1801, No. 657.”—Hooker & Greville, Ic. Fil., t. 126.
Platyloma ternifolium, J. Smith.—Brackenridge, Fil. U. S. Ex. Exped., p. 94.
Allosorus ternifolius, Kunze, in Linnæa, xxiii., p. 220.
Pteris subverticillata, Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 103.—Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 375.
Hab.—Texas, Trécul, No. 1334, according to Fournier. New Mexico, Wright, according to Hooker in Filices Exoticæ. The only specimens from Texas which I have of this species were collected by Dr. Sutton Hayes, near the headwaters of the Rio Colorado of Texas. It is a common Mexican species; it is found as far South as Peru, and reap pears in the Hawaiian Islands.