CHAPTER 11 
MAIDENHAIR 
Adiantum pedatum. 
Rootstock wide-creeping, branching, brown, slender, clothed 
with numerous small, brown, glossy, imbricated, oblong, acu- 
minate, entire scales: leaves approximate, rising alternately 
from right and left sides of rootstock: roots irregularly scat- 
tered, springing from rootstock. 
Leaves erect; sporophylls withering in autumn; sterile leaves 
sometimes persisting into winter. 
Petioles eight to eighteen inches long, slender, glossy, wiry, 
dark-reddish-chestnut to purplish-ebeneous or ebeneous, slightly 
angled at sides, convex at back, flattish-convex on face or fur- 
rowed when dried; clothed at base with imbricated scales sim- 
ilar to scales of rootstock, the uppermost two to three times 
larger; scales above few, scattered, deciduous: fibrovascular 
bundle solitary, at base of petiole U-shaped, becoming above 
\-shaped in section. 
Blades imperfectly circular, somewhat funnel-form in centre, 
flattened toward edge, eight to eighteen inches broad, dichoto- 
mous: rachises wiry, glossy, chestnut-brown to black, some- 
times purplish, tapering; the halves of the primary rachis di- 
verging at an acute angle, curving outward and upward and 
