84 WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND FERNS. 



as long as the leafy portion. The stipes is very slender and 

 fragile, sparingly furnished with thin pale scales, which are 

 continued along the rachis. The underside is slightly hairy. 

 The frond is pinnatifid with the exception of the basal pair of 

 lobes, which are not only quite distinct from those above, but 

 emphasize their independence by standing out from the rachis 

 at quite a different angle directed away from the apex, whilst 

 the others are all more or less turned towards it. These upper 

 segments are only connected by a narrow wing of the rachis, 

 but that is sufficient to prevent the frond as a whole being 

 described as pinnate. They are long and narrow, and deeply 

 cut (pinnatifid] into blunt lobes. (Plates 89, 91, 93.) 



The arrangement of the sori is similar to that described for 

 the Common Polypody they form a row on each side of the 

 rib of the lobe, only in this case a trifle nearer the margin than 

 in that species. The spores are ripe between June and August. 



Quite a false impression of the grace of this fern is given by 

 the published drawings, which appear to be from pressed 

 herbarium specimens. Very rarely will a frond be found grow- 

 ing vertically throughout its length. The rachis usually starts 

 at an angle from its junction with the stipes, even when the 

 rootstock runs on the level ; but when growing up a vertical 

 surface, the stipes is horizontal or nearly so and the rachis 

 takes a downward angle from it. This position is shown in the 

 photograph reproduced on Plate 89, whilst Plate 91 shows a 

 colony of the fern at the foot of a bank in which the more 

 erect position is assumed. 



Shade, shelter, and moisture appear to be the chief needs of 

 the Mountain Polypody, for it may be found in places where it 

 appears to get little else. But the moisture must be of the 

 ever-flowing kind, such as the unseen trickles among the 

 sphagnum and scale-mosses that clothe the steep rocks beside 

 a waterfall, or that ooze down a mossy bank. In such situations 

 the Mountain Polypody is one of the most charming of ferns, 



