ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES. 
SCOTT’S SPLEENWORT. 
NATURAL ORDER, FILICES, 
ASPLENIUM EBENOIDES, R. R. Scott.—Fronds evergreen. Barren fronds spreading, four to six 
inches long, lanceolate, pinnate at the base, pinnatifid towards the apex, tapering into a 
slender prolongation ; apex rooting; rachis black. Fertile fronds eight to ten inches long, 
nearly upright, pinnate at the base; pinnules of unequal Jength, an inch or more long, 
linear lanceolate; frond tapering into a slender prolongation which is sinuous and prolif- 
erous, mid-rib permanent to the apex; fronds more membranaceous than Asplenium pin- 
natifidum, which, with the black rachis, distinguishes it from that species. (R. Robinson 
Scott, in Gardener’s Monthly for September, 1865. See also Gray’s Manual of the 
Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman’s £lora of the Southern United States, 
and Eatou’s Ferzs of North America.) 
HHS interesting fern has a remarkable history. A single 
fyi] plant was discovered in 1862, eight miles from Phila- 
delphia, on the west bank of the Schuylkill, by Robert Robinson 
Scott, then gardener to Mr. Kennedy, of Port Kennedy. Mr. 
Scott was no ordinary man. He was related to some of the 
wealthiest families of Belfast, in Ireland, where he was born 
and received an excellent education. He was a proficient in 
most of the ancient and many of the modern languages, and. 
early developed a taste for natural history, and especially for 
Botany. He went through a course of study in the Botanic 
Garden of Glasnevin, and subsequently in the Royal Gardens at 
Kew. His father had a passionate love for his native land which 
the son inherited, and their course in this respect estranged them 
from their relations, and finally reduced them to absolute poverty. 
It was particularly a trait in the young botanist’s character that 
he would sacrifice on the instant every prospect of usefulness in 
his chosen scientific career, for his ideal of liberty and freedom, 
(113) 
