ASPIDIUM Filix foemina.
Female Shield-fern.
CRYPTOGAMIA Filices.
Gen. Char. Fructifications scattered, in roundish
dots, not marginal. Involucrum umbilicated,
bursting almost all round.
Spec. Char. Frond bipinnate; leaflets pinnatifid, serrated,
pointless. Stalk smooth. Involucrum kidneyshaped.
Syn. Aspidium Filix foemina. Swartz. Fil. 41. Sm. F l.
Brit. 1124.
Polypodium Filix foemina. Linn. Sp. PI. 1551. Huds,.
458. With. 778. Hull. 239. Relh. 411. Sibth.
271. Abbot. 226. Bolt. Fil. 46. t. 25. Dicks. H.
Sicc.fasc. 5. 18.
Filix mas non ramosa, pinnulis angustis raris, pro-
funde dentatis. Rail Syn. 121.
A l m o s t as common as the last, but in a different kind of
situation, growing in marshy shady places. It is in perfection
about July.
The root is large and tufted, bearing many very handsome
fronds 18 or 20 inches high, of a broad acute lanceolate form,
and a full grass-green colour, smooth in all their parts. Their
stalk is slender, pale, and very smooth. Leaflets (or primary
divisions) alternate, lanceolate, pointed, subdivided into
other leaflets, which are elegantly pinnatifid sometimes even
pinnate, and obtusely notched, their lobes all destitute of any
bristly termination; the upper ones are decurrent. Spots of
fructification much smaller than in A. Filix mas, and not circular
but oblong, or crescent-shaped, the involucrum being
kidney-shaped, bursting towards the rib of the leaflet. The
name merely alludes to the greater elegance or delicacy of this
species compared with the last.