) 
Ophioglossaceae. Adder's-tongue Family. 
Ours herbaceous fleshy plants of more or less fern-like habit, arising 
from a short fleshy rhizome bearing thickish cord-like roots and one or two 
leaves with basally or medianly attached fertile sporophylls, Sporangia 
naked, opening by a transverse slit, the spores of one kind, yellowish, 
germinating to give rise to tuberlike subterranean non-chlorophyllous 
gametophytes with endophytic root-inhabiting fungi (mycorhiza). 
|. Botrychium Swartz. 
Rhizomes commonly invested with old fibrous persistent leaf bases, 
bearing 1-3 fronds upon a partially subterranean common stalk, divided above 
into sterile leafy and fertile more or less paniculate non-leafy portions, 
Leaves various, simply pinnate to ternate and decompound into finely 
* divided Freier eM segments. Spores abundant, like sulphure> = / 
powder, Buds of following year terminal on the rhizome, enveloped within 
? 
; 
W the sheathing base of the common stalk of the frond. 
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