633 
FILICES. (FERNS.) 
the lowest triangular , strongly auricled on the upper side and wedge- 
truncate on the lower, densely spiny-toothed (1' or less in length), co¬ 
piously fruit-bearing; fruit-dots contiguous and near the margins.— 
Michigan ! probably in cold woods near the Northern Lakes. I have 
seen but a single specimen, of pretty large size, in the collection made 
by the State geologists, the locality not given. 
16 . ONOCLEA, L. Sensitive Fern. 
Fertile frond 2-pinnate, much contracted ; the pinnules short 
and revolute, usually so rolled up as to be converted into berry- 
shaped closed involucres filled with sporangia, and forming a one¬ 
sided spike or raceme. Fruit-dots one on the middle of each 
strong and simple primary vein (with or without sterile cross¬ 
veins), round, soon all confluent. Indusium very thin, hood-like, 
lateral, fixed by its lower side, free on the upper (towards the 
apex of the pinnule). —Sterile fronds rising separately from the 
naked extensively creeping rootstock, long-stalked, broadly trian¬ 
gular in outline, deeply pinnatifid into lance-oblong pinnae, which 
are entire or wavy-toothed, or the lowest pair even sinuate-pinna- 
tifid (decaying in autumn) ; veins reticulated into fine meshes 
throughout. (Name apparently from ovos, a vessel , and /cAcna, to 
close , from the singularly inclosed fructification.) 
1. o. sensibilis, L. — Moist copses, common. July.—A 
rare, abnormal state of this Fern, in which the pinnae of some of the 
sterile fronds, becoming again pinnatifid and more or less contract¬ 
ed, bear fruit-dots without being much revolute or losing their foli- 
aceous character, is the var. obtusilobata, Torr. JV. Y. State f /., e 
scribed from specimens gathered in Aates county, New Aork, b\ Dr. 
Sartwell , and Washington county, by Dr Smith. This explains the 
long-lost O. obtusilobata, Schkuhr (from Penn.), which, as figured, has 
the sterile fronds thus 2-pinnalely divided, with rounded pinnules, but 
the^lertile nearly as in the ordinary O. sensibilis. (Ragiopteris, r , 
is founded on a young fertile frond of this species which is placed (m 
herb. Willd. !) along with the sterile frond of some different l ern.j 
17 . SCIIIZJEA, Smith. Schizjea. 
Fertile fronds of several contracted linear pinnae which are con- 
niventin pairs at the apex of a slender stalk; the under (m ner ) 
side covered with tw r o rows of sessile naked sporangia, 
oval, vertical, furnished with a striate-rayed crest at ffie p , 
opening by a longitudinal cleft down the outer side. 
