CHAPTER XI 
SLENDER CLIFF-BRAKE 
Cryptogramma Stelleri. 
Rootstock creeping, ivory-white or yellowish, slender, cord- 
like, sparingly furnished with minute, pale, appressed, ovate, 
acuminate, delicately reticulate scales with elongate cilia at 
margin: leaves scattered: roots few, capillaceous, springing from 
all sides of rootstock. 
Leaves ascending, dimorphous, four to eight and four-fifths 
inches long, the sterile usually the shorter; tender, withering 
early, often before September. 
Petioles slender, two to five inches long, usually longer than 
blades, straw-colored to brown, palest above, slightly polished, 
grooved on face and sides, the grooves less distinct below, bearing 
a few scales: scales broadly to narrowly lanceolate, otherwise 
similar to scales of rootstock: fibrovascular bundle solitary, 
more or less rolled up or folded at ends or sometimes barely 
curved.* 
Blades ovate or ovate-oblong or ovate-deltoid, pinnate below, 
toward apex pinnatifid: pinnz few, alternate or opposite, once 
or twice pinnatifid, in largest sporophylls sometimes pinnate 
below, becoming simple toward apex of blade, the lower often 
* C. E. Waters. 
