five to twenty or more in a tiift.” Milde says of the European
fern: “ A most splendid plant. The fronds curve
over in an arch, and take root from chaffy buds near the
apex. It grows in moist forests of the evergreen region,
in shady laurel-groves, by streams and springs, and among
shaded rocks to the elevation of four thousand feet above
the sea.”
These chaffy buds usually occur singly on the rachis at
the base of one of the upper pinnæ. They are sometimes
nearly an inch in diameter, covered with brown chaffy scales,
and often emit slender roots. A section of a large one from
Madeira shows that it is a bud on the rachis developed into
a short rhizoma, with several rudimentary fronds coiled up
and hidden in the chaff.- The fact that no instance of the
formation of this bud on an American plant has as yet been
■ The fact that a stalk may produce a rhizome, noticed at page 341 o f the first
volume o f this work, though perhaps more evident in the case o f Dickson ia pilosiuscula
than in other ferns, is by no means unknown. In Sach’s Text-Book (English version, p.
3 5 1 ) several instances are given o f the same thing, as P te r is a quilin a, which often produces
a shoot from the back o f the leaf-stalk close to the base, and Aspidium F ilix -m a s , which
produces buds a short distance above the base, oftenest on one side o f the stalk. The
slender stolons o f Onoclea Struthiopteris are said to be formed in a similar way, and
Acrosticku?n aureum and Woodwardia radicans seem to do a like thing. The formation
of proliferous buds on the stalk o f Asplenium f r a g i l e , on the rachis o f Asplenium
ebeneum, the bulblets o f Cystopteris bu lb ife ra , the scaly bud o f Woodwardia radicans,
the terminal bud o f Camptosorus rhizophyllus, the numerous little buds on the upper
surface o f the pinnæ o f Woodwardia orientalis and o f the - Australian Asp id ium
p roUferum, rightly regarded, are all manifestations o f the same power which many ferns
have o f producing an adventitious proliferous bud from almost any part o f the plant.
recorded, together with a fancied difference in the spiny teeth
of the margin, and in the more or less abundantly reticulated
venation, has disposed several authors to consider our fern
specifically distinct from the European; but on the whole it is
better either to call our plant a variety of the other, or even
to wait patiently till the scaly bud shall be found, which discovery
it is only reasonable to expect.
The fronds are smooth, sub-coriaceous, oblong-ovate, and
have sometimes as many as fifteen or twenty pinnæ on each
side. The lower pinnæ are rather distant, short-stalked and
not quite so long as some of the middle ones, which
are sessile. The upper pinnæ diminish rapidly in size and
are more and more adnate-decurrent on the rachis, and so
pass into the rather short, but acute, pinnatifid apex of the
frond.
The largest pinnæ have sometimes as many as thirty
segments on each side, but more commonly there are only
about half that number. The midribs of the pinnæ are broadly
winged, and the lanceolate acute segments are set on very
obliquely, generally leaving broad sinuses between them in
the lower pinnæ, and narrower and more acute 'sinuses in the
upper ones. The segments are lanceolate from a broad base,
commonly acuminate, the margin sometimes pinnately lobed
or undulate, but always finely serrulate with appressed translucent,
slender or even aculeate teeth. The American, and
especially the Mexican specimens, have rather longer and
more spinulose teeth than those from Europe and Asia.
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