Qk M. Chapman Vol. 30, pp. 179-184 December 1, 1917 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON NOTES ON WESTERN SPECIES OF PELLAEA.* BY WILLIAM R. MAXON. The following notes relate chiefly to the taxonomy of the southwestern ferns for many years loosely associated under the name Pellaea Wrightiana Hook., to which Christensent has recently assigned the name Pellaea mucronata D. C. Eaton, in error. It is necessary to apply the name mucronata to a quite different plant, namely the California species long passing as P. ornithopus Hook., and to recognize three distinct species in the Pellaea Wrightiana of recent writers. The name mucronata, as applied to any species of the genus Pellaea, dates from 1856, with the publication of Allosorus mu-cronatus D. C. Eaton, based wholly on small specimens collected 'in the hills near the bay of San Francisco, California," by Major A. B. Eaton. This material, recently examined, clearly bears out Eaton's later statement! that his "original Allosorus mucronatus was founded on small specimens of P. ornithopus, of Hooker" (1858). In the Botany of the Mexican Boundary Survey (1859), however, Eaton had transferred A. mucronatus to Pellaea, making Pellaea mucronata include (in addition to P. ornithopus Hook.) the two southwestern forms described in 1858 as Pellaea Wrightiana Hook, and P. longimucronata Hook. Recognizing subsequently the error of associating the distinc-tively Calif ornian plant with the new southwestern plants, and objecting (loc. cit.) to Baker's use of the name mucronata for the latter, Eaton yet failed to take up the name mucronata for the Californian plant, and on the contrary wrote Allosorus mucro-* Published with the permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. + Ind. Fil. 481. 1906. I Ferns N. Amer. 2 : 8. 1880. 44— Pkoc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 30. 1917. (179)
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