A New Name for an Asplenium Hybrid

The Scott's Spleenwort, Asplenium ebenoides, was demonstrated long ago to be a cross between A. platyneuron and Camptosorus rhizophyllus by Miss Slosson.1 Later, another cross, A. cryptolepis Fernald [A. Rutamuraria var. cryptolepis Wherry, as I prefer to call it] with Camptosorus, was described by Dr. E. Lucy Braun. It has recently been rather conclusively demonstrated by Dr. Warren H. Wagner, Jr.,2 that the well-known Asplenium pinnatifidum is a fertile tetraploid (allopolyploid) derived by the crossing of Asplenium montanum and Camptosorus rhizophyllus. This being so, it is quite likely that this crossing is taking place de novo occasionally, and that some plants of A. pinnatifidum found in the wild may be sterile diploid hybrids, the result of recent hybridization and not the descendants of preexisting plants of A. pinnatifidum. A condition similar to this has been shown by Dr. Wagner to exist in A. ebenoides, for the Alabama population of this is a fullfledged "species," being a fertile tetraploid, whereas plants occurring elsewhere are newly formed, sterile diploid hybrids. Dr. Wagner has indicated that other Aspleniums also, such as A. Trudellii, A. Gravesii, and A. kentuckiense, have some Camptosorus "blood" in them, being crosses of pinnatifidum. As I pointed out in my review of Wagner's paper,3 these facts point up a serious nomenclatural difficulty. The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature provides that intergeneric hybrids (if designated by more than a formula, i.e. Asplenium platyneuron x Campto