CHAPTER XVI 
Se UNULOSE. FERN 
Dryopteris spinulosa intermedia. 
Rootstock creeping, stout, chaffy: leaves clustered slightly 
back of or partly encircling terminal leaf-buds: roots springing 
from rootstock, often two or three to a petiole. 
Leaves ascending or suberect, five inches to three feet long, 
three inches to one foot broad, imperfectly evergreen. 
Petioles two inches to one foot long, commonly shorter than 
blades, chaffy: at base dark fuscous, turgid; above more slen- 
der, green or at back slightly brownish or when dried greenish- 
straw-colored, deeply channelled on face, slightly furrowed on 
sides: scales tawny with darker centres or darker at points of 
attachment only, ovate, acuminate, entire, when removed leaving 
minute rigid points; the lower numerous, rather large; the 
upper fewer, smaller: fibrovascular bundles five to seven in base, 
three near apex, of petiole, the two anterior largest; somewhat 
roundish-strap-shaped, on broader sides sometimes slightly hol- 
lowed or furrowed. 
Blades oblong-ovate, bi-tri-pinnate: apices pinnatifid, acumi- 
nate: pinne spreading, diverging from rachis at angle of about 
sixty to ninety degrees, crowded or approximate or more distant, 
alternate or opposite, the lower short-stalked, the upper subsessile 
