CHAPTER XIV 
MASSACHUSETTS FERN 
Dryopteris simulata. 
Rootstock wide-creeping, forking, cordlike, brown, sparingly 
furnished with small, pale-brown, ovate-deltoid, reticulate scales: 
leaves clustered or approximate, springing from all sides of root- 
stock: roots few and coarse, clothed with mustard-colored wool, 
springing from rootstock. 
Leaves erect or ascending, withering in autumn, twelve to 
forty-eight inches long or longer, sterile leaves the shorter, some- 
times only half as long as sporophylls. 
Petioles six to twenty inches long, slender, stramineous, fur- 
rowed on face, bearing a few pale-brown, ovate-acuminate scales; 
at base dark brown, slightly compressed: fibrovascular bundles 
two, flattish. 
Blades six and four-fifths to twenty-two inches long, two to 
seven and one-half inches broad, oblong-lanceolate, occasionally 
oblong-deltoid, pinnate, gradually or abruptly narrowed toward 
apex: apex pinnatifid, long-acuminate: pinne twelve to twenty- 
one pairs, alternate or opposite, sessile, parting readily from 
rachis, elliptic-lanceolate, acuminate, deeply pinnatifid, the 
lower sometimes pinnate at base, basal pair usually introse: seg- 
ments oblong or oblique, obtuse, entire or sometimes toothed: 
