CHAPTER V 
POY EOD Y. 
Polypodium vulgare. 
Rootstock slender, creeping, branching, brown or, at tips, 
green, chaffy: scales numerous, small, brown; under a lens 
yellow or orange, or margins subcolorless, the centre often 
banded lengthwise in yellow or orange or reddish-orange-brown; 
ovate or lanceolate, acuminate, cordate* and often dilated at 
base, ciliate-erose: leaves approximate, borne alternately on 
right and left of top of rootstock, articulated to rootstock: roots 
springing from sides and base of rootstock, paleaceous. 
Leaves ascending or suberect, four and one-half to sixteen 
inches long, two-fifths of an inch to four and two-fifths inches 
broad, evergreen, not prostrated in winter; in icy or dry weather 
drooping forward, the segments curving horizontally and becoming 
connivent over face of blade. 
Petioles shorter to longer than blades, green or, when dried, 
greenish-stramineous, on face convex or below flattened or 
slightly hollowed, at back convex, on sides narrowly winged or 
below angled, or at extreme base subterete, glabrous or bearing 
* D. C. Eaton says “‘scales peltately attached,”’ but I find a sinus leading from the 
base to the point of attachment. An overlapping of the sides of this sinus often makes 
the scales appear peltately attached. 
