CHAPTER IX 

 EBONY SPLEENWORT 



Asplenium platyneuron. 



Rootstock creeping, chaffy: scales strongly reticulate in red- 

 dish-brown on a colorless or pale-yellow ground, lanceolate or 

 rarely linear, acuminate, ciliate : leaves fascicled at apex of root- 

 stock: roots springing from rootstock or junctures of rootstock 

 and petioles. 



Leaves more or less evergreen, sporophylls erect, six inches to 

 two feet long, up to four inches broad ; sterile leaves more or less 

 reclined, much shorter. 



Petioles four-fifths of an inch to four inches long, bright 

 reddish or darker chestnut-brown to chestnut-ebeneous, some- 

 times tinged with green, a small light-colored spot, tawny in dried 

 leaves, at the extreme base, glossy, subterete, turgid at base, 

 bearing a few scales : scales at base of petiole lanceolate to linear, 

 similar otherwise to scales of rootstock, passing above into 

 obscure scattered palea commonly hyaline and colorless on sides 

 with dark opaque reddish cross-barred centres: fibrovascular 

 bundles two in base of petiole, roundish strap-shaped, uniting 

 above into one roundish in section. 



Blades linear-oblanceolate or linear-lanceolate, pinnate, pin- 

 natifid below the serrate or crenate, acuminate or acute or 



