SPLEENWORT 
THE BLACK MAIDENHAIR 
EXPLANATION OF THE PLATES. 
Сонды: short, thick, tufted, often decumbent, sealy. Sealer lanceolate below, extended into a long 
hair-like point, dark brown, shining, cellulosely striate bel utish, numerous, branched, 
a 
Stipes elongated, usually about as ior than, the leafy portion of the frond, 
dark purplish brown, bearing about the base a few scales like tho 
flat and slightly grooved in front, rounded behind; terminal and adherent to the caudex. Rach 
the presence of an el rgin decurren 
of the pinna, round, and with the brown colour of the base more or less extending upwards behind. 
Vernation eireina 
ronda шаа 
Ihe stipes from th 
co of the leafy portion ; usual 
and shining dark 
xcen above, paler beneath, sometimes of thinner texture; deltoid or ovate, or 
1 below, always with a tapered or acuminated apex, bipinnate 
in the lesser forms, tripinnate or oceasionally almost quadripinna 
а the larger ones Pinne 
obliquely triangular, usually elongate and attenuated at the apex, the low 
nearly opposite, and 
always as long as, usually longer than the rest, the upper becoming alternate and gradually diminis 
ize ; all usually pointing upwards, Pinn 
lternate ; the lowest on the anterior side of the rachis, 
and considerably larger than the rest, obliquely and broadly ovate, with an at 
ated apex, pinnate 
at ts base, its lowest ( 
wary) pinnules being ovate obtuse, pinnatifid with sharply serrated lobes 
b 
and sharply serra 
1 at the apex. Towards the 
х of the pinna, which end in a moro 
ır less elongated acumen, the pinnules gradually 
«come oblong and decurrent at the base; and the 
vale in the larger lower pinnules themselves, the upper pinna again being 
the pinn 
are less attenuated at the points, and the pinnules are shorter, blunter, and either barely divided 
to the midvein 
т merely lobed. The ultimate divisi 
ro all notched with distinct acute serratun 
