62 PERNS OP THE LAKE COUNTRY 



so like to Lastrea as to be mistaken for it, and is dis- 

 tinguishable also from the other Aspleniums by its 

 annual fronds and its herbaceous texture. 



The Lady Fern, so called because of the peculiar 

 delicacy of its fronds contrasted with the masculine 

 robustness of the Male Fern, grows like that in plume- 

 circlets or coronals from the caudex, which in winter, 

 whether close to the ground or a few inches above it, 

 bears a tuft of incipient fronds, each rolled up separ- 

 ately and the mass nestling in a bed of chaff-like 

 scales. In May or June they are developed, twenty 

 or more being usually produced. In the summer a few 

 more generally arise in the centre, the whole dying off 

 in the autumn. The form of the fronds is lanceolate, 

 more or less broad, the stipes scaly at the base and 

 about a third of the length of the frond. The fronds 

 are bipinnate, the pinnae always lanceolate, more or 

 less drawn out at the point, and always again pinnate, 

 though sometimes with the bases of the pinnules con- 

 nected by a narrow leafy wing, but not so much so as 

 to render them merely pinnatifid. The pinnules, how- 

 ever, are more or less lobed or pinnatifid, the lobes 

 being sharply toothed in a varying manner. The 

 venation, owing to the delicate texture of the frond, is 

 very distinct, consisting in each pinnule of a wavy 

 midvein, with alternate and again alternate venules, on 

 the anterior side of which, at some distance from the 

 margin, is an oblong sorus. In the larger and more 

 divided pinnules the venation is more compound, and 

 more than one sorus is borne on each primary vein, 

 which thus becomes a midvein with branches on a 



