CHAPTER VII 

 NARROW-LEAVED SPLEENWORT 



Asplenium angustifolium. 



Rootstock creeping, light greenish-brown, brown in age, a 

 few, delicate, pale -brown, lanceolate-acuminate or broade, 

 entire or slightly toothed scales: leaves clustered near apex of 

 rootstock, springing from all sides of rootstock: roots numerous, 

 light brown, coarse, springing from rootstock and bases of pet- 

 ioles, scattered or fascicled. 



Leaves twenty to thirty- six inches long, three to eight and 

 three-fifths inches broad, sensitive to frost, sporophylls usually 

 longer and narrower, with narrower pinnae, than sterile leaves. 



Petioles shorter than blades, fleshy-herbaceous; at base brown, 

 turgid-compressed; above green or, when dried, greenish-stra- 

 mineous to bright stramineous often tinged with brown, narrow 

 and furrowed on face, at back and on sides broader and flat- 

 tish; bearing a few pale-brown scales: fibrovascular bundles 

 two; in base of petiole strap-shaped or roundish strap-shaped, 

 slightly furrowed on one or both sides; higher up more or less 

 furrowed on outer broad side, convex in centre of opposite side, 

 somewhat 3-shaped in section; in apex of petiole uniting into 

 one unevenly U-shaped in section. 



Blades lanceolate, gradually or abruptly narrowed at apex, 



