BLECHNUM SPICANT. 



SI 



veins : the capsules are covered by a continuous, linear, white, 

 membranous involucre, which opens towards the midvein ; these 

 involucres are represented in the upper figure by the white line 

 ig g), and the series of capsules appearing beneath them, are 

 represented by the black line [h h). The fronds from which 

 the descriptions and drawings were made, are so different from 

 the usual state of fertile fronds, that the characters are chiefly 

 valuable as affording a key to the normal venation, which has 

 hitherto almost eluded our inquiries : yet, furnished with this 

 key, we find that the same structure obtains, in a minor degree, 

 in all the fertile fronds. 



il f c c c b f c b d c b e h f e d e f 



The barren fronds are much shorter than the fertile, gene- 

 rally horizontal, strap-shaped, and pinnatifid, and have a short 

 portion of the stipes, not more than a sixth, naked and slightly 

 scaly. 



This fern is very subject to those deviations from normal 

 form which are so highly prized by many of our most experien- 

 ced and most successful cultivators. Some of these deviations 

 in Blechnum spicant consist in a bifid or trifid termination to 

 the frond, others in the atrophied state of all the pinnas, the 

 stipes and rachis alone remaining; the former being fringed 

 with amorphous fragments of the lost pinna. I have to 



