✓
POLYPODIUM vulgare.
Common Polypody.
CRYPTOGAMIA Filices, annul at oe.
Gen. Char. Fructifications (battered, in roundifh dots,
not marginal. Involucrum none.
S pec. Char. Frond pinnatifid : lobes oblong, fome-
what ferrated, obtnfe. Root fcaly.
Sy n : Polypodium vulgare. Linn. Sp. PI. 1544.
Hudf. 4 5 5 . With. 773. Hull. 236. Relh. 409.
Sibth. 269. Abbot. 226. Curt. Lond. fafc. 1.
t. 68. ÏVoodv. Suppl, t. 271. Bolt. Fil. 32,
t. 18.
Polypodium. Pali Syn. 1x7.
VV ERY frequent on the tops of walls, old thatched roofs,
fhady banks, and the mofiy trunks of rotten trees. The fructification
is plentiful from the beginning of fummer till the
plants are dellroyed in the courfe of the winter.
Root perennial, creeping, twifted, thickly clothed with lanceolate
brown (hining fcales; its fibres woolly, of a fhining
brown. Fronds from 6 to 12 inches high, erebt, (talked,
lanceolate, acute, deeply pinnatifid, fmooth; the lobes linear-
oblong, bluntifh, fometimes entire, but mod generally cre-
nate or ferrated, rarely lobed. Spots arranged in a fimple
feries on each fide the rib of each lobe, at nearly an equal
diftance between that and the edge, round, of a yellow brown,
convex, larger than in moft ferns, perfectly naked or deftitute
of an involucrum. Every fpot confifts of numerous (talked
round pale capfules, each encompafled with abrownifh jointed
ring. Tournefort moft unaccountably denies the exiftence
of this ring; and Adanfon, though a profefled reformer, follows
him. *
We now agree with Dr. .Swartz in feparating from this real
genus of Polypodium fuch fpecies as have an involucrum, by
the name of Afpidium. Of the ferns already figured in this
work, t. 1018 and 1019 belong to the latter genus, and t. 616
to the former.
The medical virtues of the Common Polypody are not
enough to make it worth inquiring whether that of the oak,
or that of any wall or cottage, be moft endowed with them,
P. cambricum is a barren laciniated variety of this,
§