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serrulation, much like that seen in the leaves of certain
mosses, especially of the genus Mnhtm. The pinnæ of the
fertile fronds are but half as wide as the others, and the
base is rounded or truncate.
The veins are mostly twice forked in the sterile fronds,
once forked in the fertile. The veinlets are placed about
the twenty-fifth of an inch apart: their apices are slightly
enlarged, and terminate' in the transparent border, just at the
indentations of the margin. In the fertile pinnæ the upper
veinlet of each pair bears a long and slightly recurved prominent
sorus, which extends from close to the midrib to near
the margin, there being often eight sori on a pinna. The
indusium is somewhat arched over the sorus, and is composed
of rather thick-walled irregularly polygonal or roundish
cells. The spores are ovoid and covered with anastomosing
ridges.
This spleenwort is easily cultivated in a shady corner
of a garden. The spores are produced in the greatest profusion,
and readily germinate when sowed on damp earth and
kept moist by a glass cover of some sort.
No other species of spleenwort is closely related to this
plant; the nearest one is perhaps A . anisophyllum, of Kunze,
which is found in South Africa and the Mauritius.
Plate LVI., Fig. 1- 3 . — Asplenium angustifolium. The plant figured
is from Danville, Vermont. The details represented are the base
of a fertile pinna and a spore.
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P l a t e LVL — F ig . 4 - 6 .
A S P L E N IU M C IC U T A R IUM , S w a r t z .
H emlock Spleenwort.
A s p l e n i u m c i c u t a r i u m : — Root-stock short, erect, chaffy
at the apex with rigid dark-fuscous entire lanceolate scales;
stalks a few inches to a foot long, dark-gray, nearly terete,
very narrowly wing-margined on each side from the base
upwards ; fronds erect, membranaceous, smooth, seldom over
a foot long, ovate-lanceolate, bipinnate or tripinnate, primary
and secondary rachises very narrowly winged ; pinnæ sessile,
lanceolate, the lower ones usually defiexed and shorter
than the middle ones ; pinnules rhomboid-ovate, more or less
deeply cleft into several linear-oblong lobes, the lowest superior
one often bifid, in larger fronds most of them again
pinnately lobed with the lowest lobes bifid; veinlets solitary
in the lobes ; sori elongated, one on the upper side of each
fertile veinlet ; indusium very delicate, entire on the margin,
Asplenüim cicutarium, S w a r t z , “ Prodr., p. 130.”— P r e s i ,, Tent. Pterid.,
p. 108. — L in k , Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 98. — M e it e n iu s , Fil.
Hort. Lips., p. 71, t. xiii., fig. 3-9 (segments); Asplenium,
p. 1 1 6 .— M o o r e , Index Fil., p. 119 . — H o o k e r , Sp. Fil., iii.,
p. 19 8 .— H o o k e r & B a k e r , Syn. Fil., p. 220. — E aton , in
Bull. Torr. Botan. Club, vi., p. 264.