Genera Filicum A Revised Classification of Leptosporangiate Ferns

Abstract

BY a curious coincidence two independently compiled reclassifications of the ferns have appeared in print almost simultaneously but from different parts of the world. Both are of very considerable botanical interest, since the phylogeny of ferns is a topic of wider evolutionary significance than the taxonomic context alone might suggest. The phyletic views of the late Prof. F. O. Bower, based largely on anatomical and developmental data, are Well known to all morphologists and have for long been the basis of teaching in many universities. The phyletic views of the pure systematist in pteridology have, however, been only imperfectly available. Christensen‘s phyletic scheme published in 1938 was regarded by its author as only tentative, though unfortunately he did not live to develop it more fully. This scheme has, however, been kept vividly in mind by both the authors under review1 and both can, in a sense, be read as commentaries on Christen-sen as on Bower.

Genera Filicum

The Genera of Ferns. By Dr. Edwin Bingham Copeland. (Annales Cryptogamici et Phytopathologici, Vol. 5.) Pp. xvi + 247 + 10 plates. (Waltham, Mass. : Chronica Botanica Co. ; London : Wm. Dawson and Sons, Ltd., 1947.) 6 dollars.

A Revised Classification of Leptosporangiate Ferns

By E. E. Holttum, J. Linn. Soc. London, 53, pp. 123–158 (1947).