yellow-green, membranous, glabrous or sparingly silky along the rhachis and sometimes on the margins, 2–3-pinnatifid. Stipes slender, terete, wingless, glabrous except a tuft of silky hairs at the base; main rhachis winged towards the top, wingless elsewhere. Primary pinnæ often close and overlapping, short, rhomboidal-ovate or flabellate, acuminate; secondary cuneate at the base, deeply pinnatifid. Ultimate segments linear, flat, entire. Sori small, terminal on the segments, usually on the lateral ones, slightly immersed at the base. Indusium orbicular or nearly so, 2-valved to below the middle; valves usually entire.—Hook. Sp. Fil. i. 111; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. ii. 15; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 356; Hook. and Bak. Syn. Fil. 61; Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 705; Thoms. N.Z. Ferns, 42; Field, N.Z. Ferns, 57, t. 19, f. 6. H. nitens, R. Br. Prodr. 159; A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel. 91; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 236; Raoul, Choix, 39.
North and South Islands, Stewart Island, Chatham Islands, Auckland Islands: Not uncommon in woods throughout. Sea-level to 2500 ft.
Also in Tasmania and south-eastern Australia, and reported from Sumatra and the Philippine Islands. Some varieties approach very closely to narrow-fronded forms of H. demissum, but in its ordinary state it cannot be easily confounded with any other.
11. H. rufescens, T. Kirk in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xi. (1879) 457, t. 19a.—Very delicate, forming mats on the trunks of trees or on the perpendicular faces of shaded rocks. Rhizome very slender, almost filiform, branched, creeping, sparingly clothed with soft spreading hairs. Stipes much longer than the frond proper, 1–2 in., capillary, wingless, clothed when young with long flexuous hairs. Fronds ½–1½ in. long, ½–¾ in. broad at the base, deltoid, delicately membranous and pellucid, 2-pinnatifid; rhachis winged almost to the base, and with the veins and occasionally the surfaces of the frond more or less covered with long flexuous silky hairs. Pinnæ 3–4 pairs, close, overlapping, cuneate-rhomboid or the lowest almost flabellate, deeply pinnatifid or lobed. Segments linear, obtuse, flat, quite entire. Sori terminating the segments, slightly immersed at the base. Indusium ovate-orbicular, 2-valved to the base; valves entire or slightly toothed, often ciliate.—Bak. in Annals of Bot. v. (1890–91) 192; Thoms. N.Z. Ferns, 43; Field, N.Z. Ferns, 63, 1. 15, f. 6.
North Island: Summit of Te Aroha Mountain, Adams! T.F.C.; Oroua River (Ruahine Range), H. G. Field! Mount Egmont Ranges, T.F.C. South Island: Nelson—Mount Arthur Plateau, T.F.C.; Takaka Valley, Kingsley; Mount Rochfort, Rev. F. J. Spencer! Westland—Okarito, A. Hamilton! Stewart Island: Rakiahua, A. Hamilton, P. Goyen. 1000–3500 ft.
Nearest to H. flabellatum, some mountain forms of which approach it very closely, but separated by the much longer capillary stipes, shorter, broader, and more delicate fronds, and by the copious hairs. H. subtilissimum differs in the larger size, the shape of the frond, and in the stellate tomentum.
