100 Silvery Spleenwort 
or serrate: pinnz sessile or very short-stalked, linear-lanceolate, 
acuminate, or the uppermost acute to obtuse, passing toward 
apex of blade into obtuse segments, deeply pinnatifid, the apices 
undulate to serrulate or serrate: pinne’s segments oblong or 
ovate-oblong, obtuse or subacute, serrate or crenate, often ob- 
scurely so, or incisely serrate or lobed: rachis furrowed on face, 
at least above, toward base bearing a few scales which are 
articulated at apex and similar to those of upper part of 
petiole: surfaces studded, especially along rachis, midribs and 
veins, with articulated hairs marked at joints and sometimes 
tinged otherwise with golden-brown: color green: texture her- 
baceous. 
Venation pinnate, free or with occasional areole: primary 
branches of midveins of pinne’s segments commonly simple, 
sometimes once-forked, especially in the more deeply cut seg- 
ments, or in latter bearing a few simple branches. 
Sori borne each on a primary branch, when this is simple, 
of a midvein, when it is compound, extending along or wholly 
upon its superior basal branch, opening toward midvein; single 
and oblong or linear or the smaller suboval, or on veins that are 
both primary branches of one midvein and superior basal branches 
of primary branches of another, often opposed in pairs (dipla- 
zioid) for the whole or part of their length, one sorus of each 
pair opening toward one midvein, the other toward the other 
midvein, the two often connate at outer end forming an athyrioid 
sorus which is either hamate or hippocrepiform; indusia silvery 
and arched when young, often pointed at ends, entire or sub- 
entire. 
Spores bean-shaped, irregularly and narrowly winged. 
Habitat. Rich, damp woods and ravines, near banks of 
