CHAPTER IX 
EBONY SPLEENWORT 
Asplenium platyneuron. 
Rootstock creeping, chaffy: scales strongly reticulate in red- 
dish-brown on a colorless or pale-yellow ground, lanceolate or 
rarely linear, acuminate, ciliate: leaves fascicled at apex of root- 
stock: roots springing from rootstock or junctures of rootstock 
and petioles. 
Leaves more or less evergreen, sporophylls erect, six inches to 
two feet long, up to four inches broad; sterile leaves more or less 
reclined, much shorter. 
Petioles four-fifths of an inch to four inches long, bright 
reddish or darker chestnut-brown to chestnut-ebeneous, some- 
times tinged with green, a small light-colored spot, tawny in dried 
leaves, at the extreme base, glossy, subterete, turgid at base, 
bearing a few scales: scales at base of petiole lanceolate to linear, 
similar otherwise to scales of rootstock, passing above into 
obscure scattered palea commonly hyaline and colorless on sides 
with dark opaque reddish cross-barred centres: fibrovascular 
bundles two in base of petiole, roundish strap-shaped, uniting 
above into one roundish in section. 
Blades \inear-oblanceolate or linear-lanceolate, pinnate, pin- 
natifid below the serrate or crenate, acuminate or acute or 
