CHAPTER XI 

 SLENDER CLIFF-BRAKE 



Cryptogramma Stelleri. 



Rootstock creeping, ivory-white or yellowish, slender, cord- 

 like, sparingly furnished with minute, pale, appressed, ovate, 

 acuminate, delicately reticulate scales with elongate cilia at 

 margin : leaves scattered : roots few, capillaceous, springing from 

 all sides of rootstock. 



Leaves ascending, dimorphous, four to eight and four-fifths 

 inches long, the sterile usually the shorter; tender, withering 

 early, often before September. 



Petioles slender, two to five inches long, usually longer than 

 blades, straw-colored to brown, palest above, slightly polished, 

 grooved on face and sides, the grooves less distinct below, bearing 

 a few scales: scales broadly to narrowly lanceolate, otherwise 

 similar to scales of rootstock: fibrovascular bundle solitary, 

 more or less rolled up or folded at ends or sometimes barely 

 curved.* 



Blades ovate or ovate-oblong or ovate-deltoid, pinnate below, 

 toward apex pinnatifid: pinnae few, alternate or opposite, once 

 or twice pinnatifid, in largest sporophylls sometimes pinnate 

 below, becoming simple toward apex of blade, the lower often 



* C. E. Waters. 



