CHAPTER VII 
NARROW-LEAVED SPLEENWORT 
Asplenium angustifolium. 
Rootstock creeping, light greenish-brown, brown in age, a 
few, delicate, pale- brown, lanceolate-acuminate or broade, 
entire or slightly toothed scales: leaves clustered near apex of 
rootstock, springing from all sides of rootstock: roots numerous, 
light brown, coarse, springing from rootstock and bases of pet- 
ioles, scattered or fascicled. 
Leaves twenty to thirty-six inches long, three to eight and 
three-fifths inches broad, sensitive to frost, sporophylls usually 
longer and narrower, with narrower pinne, than sterile leaves. 
Petioles shorter than blades, fleshy-herbaceous; at base brown, 
turgid-compressed; above green or, when dried, greenish-stra- 
mineous to bright stramineous often tinged with brown, narrow 
and furrowed on face, at back and on sides broader and flat- 
tish; bearing a few pale-brown scales: fibrovascular bundles 
two; in base of petiole strap-shaped or roundish strap-shaped, 
slightly furrowed on one or both sides; higher up more or less 
furrowed on outer broad side, convex in centre of opposite side, 
somewhat 3-shaped in section; in apex of petiole uniting into 
one unevenly U-shaped in section. 
Blades lanceolate, gradually or abruptly narrowed at apex, 
