76 WHERE TO FIND FERNS. 



at Sleive Bignian and on the Mourne Mountains; 

 and in Louth, on the Carlingford Mountains. It grows at 

 heights reaching to three thousand five hundred feet 

 above the sea-level. 



XIII. T HE BRISTLE FERN. 



Trichomanes radicans. 

 (Plate IX., Fig. i, page 65.) 



LENGTH OF FROND. Six inches to a foot and a half. 



GENERAL DESCRIPTION. Roots fibrous, blackish, 

 woolly, and numerous. Rootstock, a creeping rhizoma 

 black and covered with scales that extends itself along 

 upon the surface of the rocks upon which it is found 

 growing. Fronds evergreen, triangular, tripinnate ; stipes 

 about equal in length to the leafy part or less purplish 

 black, as also are the rachides. Pinnae triangular and 

 alternate upon the rachis ; pinnules ovate or lance- 

 shaped, alternate upon the secondary rachides lobes 

 irregularly-shaped, but somewhat oblong, alternate, and 

 deeply incised or serrated. Leafy, narrow wings run along 

 n either side of the stipes, rachis, and secondary rachides. 

 General character of the leafy texture of the frond pellucid. 

 Fructification in urn-shaped receptacles produced near 

 the ends of veins projected bristle-like beyond the 

 lobe-margins, and through and beyond the urn-shaped 

 ueceptacles. 



HABITATS. The wet sides of rocks and caves where 

 the most absolute shade prevails and the air is laden 

 with reeking moisture. Such habitats are essential to 

 the very life of this beautiful fern, whose pellucid texture 



