Gleichenia microphylla R.Br.

Rhizome to 3 mm diameter, the young parts covered with narrow dark brown rigid fringed scales. Fronds on young plants bipinnatifid, determinate, rarely fertile, on old plants usually branched, the primary branches sometimes forked with leaflets below the fork, rarely proli-ferous beyond the fork and then not bearing leaflets below the fork; secondary branches sometimes also forked. Scales on resting apices of rachis narrow, very dark, with pale thin marginal hairs towards the base and rigid dark setae near apex; rachises and costae more or less densely clothed with very small dark scales, their edges bearing rigid concolorous setae. Ultimate branches 12-25 by 4-5 cm; leaflets 7-9 mm apart, 2½-4 mm wide; lobes of lamina 1-1.8 mm long, 0.7-1.5 mm wide at the base, apex rounded, edges usually a little reflexed; lower surface slightly concave, not glaucous. Sorus (if present) at first embedded in a circular cavity which occupies half the width of the lobe, edges of cavity not raised; sporangia 3-4 (rarely 5), surrounded by brown hairs not longer than the ripe sporangia.

In open places in sandy or thin peaty soil on summits or exposed ridges of mountains at 750-1800 m, especially on sandstone. At Fraser's Hill, Malay Peninsula, 1250 m, this species occurs in open places on a quartzite ridge, not on the neighbouring granite; it occurs on the summits of some isolated granite mountains (Mt Ophir, G. Belumut). It is abundant from 1000 m upwards in open Leptospermum forest, with Sphagnum, in thin peaty soil on the sandstone mountain G. Jerai or Kedah Peak.