THE FORKED SPLEENWORT. 



Asplenium septentrionale. HULL. 



This is another of the small and rare Ferns, though 

 more widely distributed than A. germanicu/m, and 

 growing to an elevation of 3,000 feet, tufted some- 

 times in large masses and grassy looking, differing 

 from A. germanicum (which some botanists consider a 

 variety of it) by its fronds being either simple with 

 mere lobes, or forked with two distinct branches, each 

 like* its own smaller fronds, and never being regularly 

 pinnate as A. germanicum is. It is also narrower in 

 its parts, with a thicker texture, and less leafy. The 

 fronds are from two to six inches long, slender, and of 

 a dull green ; the stipes is rather long and dark purple 

 at the base ; the leafy part of the frond, hardly to be 

 called leafy, is narrow elongated lance-shaped, split 

 near the end into two or sometimes three alternate 

 divisions, or in the smaller fronds into as many teeth, 

 each of the divisions of the frond having its margin 

 cut into two or more sharp-pointed teeth, the points of 

 the larger teeth very frequently split again. The 

 forked fronds are indefinite in form and apparently 

 one-sided, one division being smaller than the other, 

 and looking like a side branch with nothing to balance 



