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The fronds are lanceolate in outline, usually a little narrower
at the base than in the middle. They are almost coriaceous, and
apparently evergreen, since specimens in pretty good order were
collected in January, May, August, and November. The color
is a good bright green, somewhat paler, or in varieties nudatum
and imbyicans almost glaucous, beneath. In the normal plant
the pinnæ are very numerous, one of Professor Brewer’s Crescent
City specimens having over seventy on each side. In
these splendid fronds the pinnæ are fully four inches long,
nearly straight, wide-spreading, and linear-acuminate from a
base which has an acute ovate auricle on the upper side, and
is cut away obliquely on the lower. The under surface bears a
few minute long-pointed ciliate scales, especially along the midvein
and on the veinlets. The margin is sharply serrated with
oblique or incurved aculeate teeth, which very often bear a much
smaller tooth on each side of the base. The veins are pinnate
from the midvein, there being about forty to forty-five principal
veins on each side. Each vein is forked near its base, the upper
fork or veinlet running unbranched to the margin, and the lower
fork divided into two veinlets, the upper one of which, and sometimes
the lower also, is commonly again similarly forked. The
uppermost veinlet of each group usually bears a sorus rather
nearer the margin than the midvein ; and in heavily-fruited fronds
the lowest veinlet of each group is sometimes also fertile, in this
case bearing the sorus still nearer the margin than the primary
row of sori.
The sporangia, as they ripen, develop a longer and longer
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pedicel, so that, when fully matured, the pedicel is several times
as long as the sporangium, and the fruit almost entirely covers
the back of the pinnæ. The indusium is orbicular and peltate,
as in all the A sp id ia of the section Polystichum. It is usually
somewhat jagged at the edge, the teeth running out into slender
jointed hairs; but on some plants it seems to be entire, and with
no marginal hairs.
Var. nudatum is so unlike the type of the species, that, if it
had been sent from some other country than California, it would
not have been referred to this species. The pinnæ are comparatively
few in number, broadly oval-oblong in shape, the auricle
scantily developed, and the chaff almost entirely lacking. The
base of the stalk is not preserved in the specimens I have seen ;
but it is very probable that it was covered with narrow scales
as in the next variety.
Var. iznbricans, though chaffy enough at the base, has the
frond nearly smooth. The pinnæ are lanccolatc-oblong, crowded,
very rigid, and usually directed obliquely upwards, so as to lap
over each other. It looks like a plant grown in a hot and dry
place, and passes by gradations into the type on one side, and
into var. nudatum on the other.
Var. inciso-serratum corresponds to var. incisum of A s pidium
acrostichoides, and is represented by large and broad
fronds, with broad pinnæ incised one-third or one-fourth of the
way down to the midvein. Each group of veinlets consists of
from five to seven, three or four of them often soriferous.
The North-American ferns most closely related to Aspidimn
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