CHAPTER VI 
PURPLE CLIFF-BRAKE 
Pellza atropurpurea. 
Rootstock creeping, short, stout, usually nodose, thickly 
clothed with soft, lustrous, cinnamon or orange-colored or 
whitish, hyaline, linear, acuminate, entire scales: leaves clus- 
tered at apex of rootstock: roots springing from rootstock, some- 
times paleaceous. 
Leaves two and one-third to twenty inches long; ultimate 
divisions persistent during winter, falling off in spring,* petioles 
and rachises persistent. 
Petioles two to six inches long or longer, wiry, purplish- 
ebeneous to blackish-red, rigid, terete; at base slightly turgid, 
bearing a few scales similar to scales of rootstock; above usually 
paleaceous: fibrovascular bundle solitary, U-shaped. 
Blades about two to six inches broad, oblong-lanceolate or 
ovate, above once, below twice pinnate: pinnz alternate or 
opposite: ultimate divisions three-tenths of an inch to two inches 
long, two-fifths of an inch or less broad, alternate or opposite, 
obtuse or obscurely mucronulate; at base cordate, truncate, or 
obtuse, sessile to short-stalked; the sterile oval or ovate; the fertile 
linear or linear-oblong or the smaller elliptical; the apical long- 
* H. H. Swift. 
