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1 9 4 F E RN S OF N O R TH AMERICA,
less elongated ; rather thicker than a goose-quill ; and, though at
first covered with chaffy scales, when old it becomes quite bare,
and has then a wrinkled white-pruinose surface. The scales are
about four lines long, and taper from a broad base to a very fine
point. Their general color is a deep ferruginous brown ; but
under a microscope they are seen to be composed of straight
oblong cellules of various shades of color, the deep-brown, amber
colored, and transparent ones often mixed together like the
stones in a piece of mosaic. The edges are very pale, and
minutely ciliate-toothed. The stout and rigid stalks are variable
in length, being commonly a little shorter than the fronds
they support. A section is broadly rounded on the back and
sides, and has a deep and wide channel on the face. It contains
four round fibro-vascular bundles, the two nearer the face
much larger than the others. The fronds measure from less
than two to ten or twelve inches in length, and from an inch
and a half to over six inches in breadth. Their general outline
is ovate. Their substance is very fleshy when they are fresh,
but in the dried specimens coriaceous and rigid. The midrib
of the frond and the midveins of the segments are heavy and
very prominent beneath. The whole frond has a firm threadlike
border, which is decurrent at the base, and continuous with
the incurved margins of the furrow of the stalk. On the smallest
fronds there are only three or five oval or slightly oblong
segments ; but in the largest ones there are as many as twelve
or thirteen large linear-oblong segments on each side. The segments
are from eight or ten lines to three and a half inches in
FERNS OF NORTH AMERICA. 195
length, and from six to eight lines in breadth. The upper ones
are separated by very narrow cuttings, which extend almost to
the midrib, but the lower ones by broader and rounded sinuses,
the lower side of the segments being narrowed, and somewhat
decurrent on the midrib. The terminal segment is either distinct,
or confluent with but one of its neighbors : it is commonly
as large as most of the others. All the segments are obscurely
toothed, and are obtuse and rounded at the apex.
The veins are pinnate from the midvein, and each one is
forked near the base : the upper fork is undivided ; but the lower
one bears a branch higher up on the lower side, and is again
forked into two terminal veinlets. The last veinlet on the upper
side of one group commonly unites with the lowest inferior
veinlet of the next higher group, forming an areole, which
encloses the lowest superior veinlet of the lower of these two
groups. This arrangement of the veinlets is characteristic of
the section of the genus to which the name Goniophlehium
has been given. In some other species of this section several
rows of such areoles are regularly formed. The arrangement,
however, is not constant; and a close examination of a frond of
the present species (or of many others of the section) will reveal
plenty of groups of veinlets which are entirely separate or free,
and of course forming no areoles. Hence it is that Goziiophle-
bium, and Phlebodimn, Campyloneuron, Phymatodes, and a host
of other proposed genera, founded only on differences in venation,
and at first received by many good botanists, were disapproved
of by the maturer judgment of Hooker, and, after a
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