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 



