THE fern genus Elaphoglossum is one of the largest in the family Aspidiaceae. Moreover, some taxonomists would like to place it in a separate family, Elaphoglossaceae1. Of more than four hundred species of Elaphoglossum, most are to be found in tropical America. Some of the species deviate so much from the type of Elaphoglossum that they have been separated from the genus, and one of them is the species Elaphoglossum crinitum, which has been renamed Hymenodium crinitum by Fee and Dictyoglossum crinitum by J. Smith. Copeland, however, prefers the name Elaphoglossum crinitum2.