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The following form deserves mention, but is scarcely sufficiently distinct
to be regarded as a permanent variety :—
Var. incisum:— Pinnæ incisely toothed or even pinnatifid, those of the
fertile fronds bearing sori at the tips clear to the base of the frond. — G r a y .
1. c .— Aspidium Schweiiiitzii, B e c k , Botany of the United States North of
Virginia, ed. i., p. 448.
H a b .— Shady hillsides, oftenest in rocky places; from New Brunswick
and Canada westward to Wisconsin, and southward to Arkansas and Central
Alabama. In Dr. Chapman’s Flora Florida and Mississippi are also
given, but I do not now find any specimens from those States. The species
has not been found anywhere outside of North America.
D e s c r i p t i o n .— This is one of the most abundant ferns of
Eastern North America, and, having evergreen fronds, with a fine
polish on the upper surface, it is well suited to the purpose of decorating
our homes and churches at Christmas-time, whence the
common name. The root-stocks creep just beneath the soil for a
distance of several inches, and are thickly covered by the still attached
bases of old stalks, from among which copious branching
fibrous roots are emitted, and fasten the plant to the ground. The
fronds rise in a graceful crown from the end of the root-stock,
most of them appearing in early Spring, and remaining fresh and
green until the new growth appears the next year. The stalks are
from three or four to eight or ten inches long, and in the living
plant are nearly terete, being slightly flattened on the anterior
or upper side. They are full-green in color, becoming brownish
at the very base. Usually they are chaffy, with large and small
light-brown scales and chaffy hairs intermixed. This chaffiness
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often follows the rachis nearly to the apex of the frond, but at other
times it falls away long before the fronds begin to wither, leaving
them almost perfectly smooth. A section of the stalk shows
four or five roundish fibro-vascular bundles arranged in a semicircle,
the two anterior bundles much larger than the others. The
dried stalk is often deeply furrowed, owing to the contraction
of the tissues between the two larger bundles.
The fronds in mature plants are from one to two feet
long, and rarely as much as five inches broad. The pinnæ of
such fronds number from twenty-four to thirty on each side,
the uppermost ones becoming smaller and smaller, and the
frond ending in a short incised or serrated point. The texture
of the pinnæ is sub-coriaceous ; the upper surface deep-green,
smooth and shining in the living plant, but duller in dried
specimens. The under surface is somewhat paler and scantily
scurfy-puberulent or minutely chaffy. The largest pinnæ are
from two to nearly three inches long, and about half an inch
wide in the middle. In shape they are oblong or lanceolate-
oblong from a very unequal base, being suddenly narrowed to
the short stalk on the lower side of the base, but on the upper
side furnished with a well-developed triangular-ovate bristle-
tipped auricle. The margin is normally finely serrulate with
bristle-tipped incurved teeth; but very frequently the teeth are
larger, so that the pinnæ are serrate or incised-serrate. This
form, with incised-serrate pinnæ, is occasionally found in all parts
of the country, and is indeed, as Prof. F. L. Harvey informs us,
the common form in Arkansas. A sterile frond, with the pinnæ
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