The Lindsaeoid ferns of the Old World V. The smaller Pacific islands K.U. Kramer Botanical Museum and Herbarium, Utrecht INTRODUCTION The the third of the Old World Lindsaeoid ferns. present paper is regional revision The second (the fourth in the entire series on the Old World Lindsaeoids) will be published vol. of Flora it is the as II, 1 part 3 Malesiana; awaiting publication as present paper goes and the the to the press. Species fully described there extending into area covered by revision dealt with order avoid redundance. present are not at length again, in to The treatment deals with the of and present species Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, the smaller Pacific Islands from Palau the the or, more precisely, the Islands, Marianas, and The Bismarck Archipelago in the West to Hawaiiand the Marquesas in the East. Volcano Islands wil be and Bonin treated with Japan,to which country they wererecently returned; the Admiralty Islands are included in Flora Malesiana; New Zealand will be dealt with with New Caledonia the of together Australia; was subject a separate publication (Kramer far been found 1967); no Lindsaeoid ferns have so on the Tuamotus, Pitcairn, Easter and other islands in the East of atoll islands. Island, extreme Polynesia, nor on any BIBLIOGRAPHY The literature the the of this number of citations with synonymy in taxonomic part works ferns paper is quite limited. Many of the older on or on the whole vascular flora Pacific the of islands in the contain notes on species from the group under discussion, but identifications uncertain that there is need cite them. in the were so hardly any to Reports literature of the for specimens not seen by writer are ignored the same reason, except in of distinctive the single case one very species (Lindsaea walkerae). Modern, comprehensive, more or less critical treatments of ferns or the entire vascular flora of Pacific islands or Archipelagos that contain notes on Lindsaeoid ferns are by and Islands Brown Brown (Society to Pitcairn, 1931), Christensen (Hawaii, 1925; Samoa, 1943), Copeland (Fiji, 1929; Society Islands, 1932), Glassman (Ponape, 1952), Hosokawa (Micronesia, 1936), Wagner and Grether (Guam, 1948), Wilder (Rarotonga, 1931), and Yuncker the are from these (Tonga, 1959). Most citations given in following papers, will be the and although it evident that the present author's views on taxonomy nomen- clature of the species are very often at variance with thoseof the above-cited authors. PHYTOGEOGRAPHIC NOTES would be to the distribution of the Pacific Lindsaeoid It rewarding compare patterns ferns with those of the vascular plants in general and see how they tie in with them and VOL. No. BLUMEA XVIII, I, 1970 158 Pacific. distribution E.Malesia the N.Zeal. Ij in paleotropics Malesia Asia Malesia paleotropics Further Malesia Australia Rotuma Malesia Austr., Malesia S.E. Malesia Tapeinidium E. E. Hawaii + Marquesas and + Is Society + + Polynesia otonga Har 4- Sphenomeris, Tonga + + Samoa + + + + + + + •H •r-> •H to X + + + + N.Caledonia + + Lindsaea, + + X + + X 9 X Hebrides N. + + + + of Melanesia Is Cruz Santa + + + + + + + x + + + Is Solomon .+ X + + + Distribution A. Bismarck + + Carolines + X + I. + X Micronesia Is Palau + + + TABLE Marianas + + + a form ssp.agatii in ensifolia ssp.lucida present present different endemic ii ssp.brevipes Lindsaea chrysolepis cultrata dimorpha ensifolia ssp. franc gueriniana harveyi jarrettiana kingii lapeyrousii linearis lobata lucida moorei nervosa obtusa odorata pacifica pickeringii prolongata propinqua + x x K. U. Khameh: The Lindsaeoid ferns of the Old World V 159 paleotrop. Louisiades Queensland Luzon Is. distribution Japan, Is.Rapa, I. Guinea Malesia Malesia Malesia, Asia, Malesia Malesia, Guinea Further Malesia Queensland Wallis W.,C.Malesia Malesia China, Austral Admiralty N. E. E. C. S.E. E. E. N. s + Hawaii Marquesas + + >» •H P <ü •H O O CO + + + X Polynesia sö O ■p 01 + + + Tonga 0 X Samoa + + + «H -r-> •H + + + + X + + + X ? X X X + + ? 05 g Q) rH 05O Ä <D 0) •H u& W Ä + + + + + + + Melanesia A N2O 05 ■P§CO + + 1 + + + + X + + + + + + o Üoeo (— O CO + + + + + + ? + + < M01i •H Carolines + + + X + Micronesia Is Palau + + + Marianas + + aform var.blanda cheilosora in . delicatula lingulata macraeana marquesensispectinata falcata var sessilis different a rae present present endemic ehr a pulchella var. var. var. var. var. var. var. salomonis tetragona vieillardii vitiensis Sohenomeris angustifolia chinensis deltoidea Tapeinidium amboynense denhamii Carolinense melanesicum novoguineense pul repens rigida ruf walke alutacea biflora retusa + x s BLUMEA 160 VOL. XVIII, No. I, 1970 with the offered for distribution the Pacific. explanations various types in Unfortunately of there is, to my knowledge, no modern phytogeographic analysis the species of the with the distribution Pacific flora as a whole, van Balgooy's paper (i960) dealing only of Nevertheless about phanerogamic genera. many ideas of a general kind the Pacific flora have been expressed and published. of the modern be found the Many ones may in report of onPacific ed. L. Gressitt in the Symposium Biogeography by J. (1963), and the papers there. If confine ourselves the Pacific flora cited we to fern we are again faced by the of modern and of absence a treatment, also by the poor state exploration of some parts, in Melanesia. In the the data obtained the author notably western following by present are less compared with the general notes on the distribution in the more or modern regional treatments cited above, ifany. The conclusions should by no means be regarded as final, of and but rather as reflecting the present state exploration knowledge, but they may be of some use as the raw material for future evaluation of phytogeographic data on a much larger scale. The known distribution of the Pacific Lindsaeoid ferns is charted in table I, which New in taxonomic includes the Caledonian ones not described the part of the present before treatment but dealt with (Kramer 1967). The assortment is best reviewed island group by island group. the and For Marquesas Brown Brown (1931) found strong ties with the Society Islands, suggesting derivation from a common centre. In our group the Marquesas have There an even poorer assortment than the Society Islands. are no endemicsin the Society their Islands, species being either widespread or at least more or less so in thePacific. Two Tahiti of species reaching skip many theislands farther West and reappear only in western Melanesia. of Van Balgooy (i960) called the flora Tonga a depauperate version of that of Fiji. By and large the same seems to hold for the ferns, judging from Yuncker's list (1959), at least if that is interpreted in terms of supposed immigration rather than in the distribution of species peculiar to Fiji and Tonga. The same is true for the Lindsaeoids. ofthe ferns of Christensen's treatment Samoa (1943) contains few general remarks; his conclusion that than and much richer than the Islands also Samoa is poorer Fiji Society is None true for the present group of ferns. of the Lindsaeoid ferns occurring in Samoa is absent from doubtful but the the Fiji (with one exception), reverse is not true. Still, line does of Andesite not seem to represent a break in the distribution many species, the overall of picture being one gradual impoverishment from the Bismarck Archipelago table stressed the of eastward, as I shows. Copeland (1929) that links the Fijian fern flora widi the much thanwith the The true the West are stronger East. same is in present group stated of ferns, although perhaps not as predominantly as by Copeland. He assigned all of species ranging to the West and to the East Fiji to the western element, assuming that but they must have come from the West, whichmay be true gives a bias to his figures with which he aimed what he The author would to prove actually presupposed. present be inclined to question his statement (I.e., p. 5) 'Papua and Fiji were reached and crossed by immigrants from the West; but Papua itselfcontributedalmost nothing to this colonizing and did population Fiji not contribute much'. The New Hebrides, with the Santa Cruz be said here. Several Islands, are so poorly explored that very little can of the more Lindsaeoids reach widespread Pacific them, and more will probably be added to the list by future collecting. Surprisingly, none ofthe species peculiar to New Caledonia have so far been found on the New Hebrides, not even Sphenomeris deltoidea (New Caledonia and Santa Ysabel in the The Solomon Islands Solomons). are relatively rich, probably and equal to parts of adjacent New Guinea comparable in size and altitude, several species extending or otherwise restricted to New Guinea occur as far East as the Solomons. On K. U. Kramer: The Lindsaeoid ferns of the Old World V 161 the other hand they have some Pacific species that do not reach New Guinea, some extending to the Bismarck Archipelago. Thome (in Gressitt, i.e., p. 328) included the Solomon the Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago in a separate district of Papuan Subregion, mainly on zoogeographical grounds. This is not borne out by the distribution of the Lindsaeoid fems. The absence (or scarcity ?) of the ubiquitous Sphenomeris chinensis, not previously found and again not collected by the recent expeditions to the Solomons, The of Bismarck is striking and not readily explicable. flora the Archipelago is again so that Like the Solomon poorly known any conclusions would be hazardous. Islands, this archipelago is the western limit of some Pacific taxa. Better exploration will probably reveal the of most of them presence Papuan species. Micronesia is very poor in species; are otherwise Malesian. With Sphenomeris biflora Guam has one Japanese-Philippine reached the species. Hawaii is only by two most widespread gerontogeanLindsaeoids, Sphenomeris chinensis and Lindsaea repens, the latter with an endemic variety.