CHAPTER III 

 MAIDENHAIR 



Adiantum pedatum. 



Rootstock wide-creeping, branching, brown, slender, clothed 

 with numerous small, brown, glossy, imbricated, oblong, acu- 

 minate, entire scales: leaves approximate, rising alternately 

 from right and left sides of rootstock: roots irregularly scat- 

 tered, springing from rootstock. 



Leaves erect; sporophylls withering in autumn; sterile leaves 

 sometimes persisting into winter. 



Petioles eight to eighteen inches long, slender, glossy, wiry, 

 dark-reddish-chestnut to purplish-ebeneous or ebeneous, slightly 

 angled at sides, convex at back, flattish-convex on face or fur- 

 rowed when dried; clothed at base with imbricated scales sim- 

 ilar to scales of rootstock, the uppermost two to three times 

 larger; scales above few, scattered, deciduous: fibrovascular 

 bundle solitary, at base of petiole U-shaped, becoming above 

 V-shaped in section. 



Blades imperfectly circular, somewhat funnel-form in centre, 

 flattened toward edge, eight to eighteen inches broad, dichoto- 

 mous: rachises wiry, glossy, chestnut-brown to black, some- 

 times purplish, tapering; the halves of the primary rachis di- 

 verging at an acute angle, curving outward and upward and 



