14 BEAUTIFUL FERNS. 
The fronds are singularly feathery and graceful in their 
appearance. They are rarely less than a foot long, and may 
attain a length of over three feet. They are green, delicately 
herbaceous, withering very quickly when plucked, but often 
bleaching very prettily in the autumn. The upper surface is 
nearly smooth, but the under-surface is minutely glandular- 
puberulent, and sometimes finely hairy. In drying they give 
out a rather pleasant hay-like odor, though by no means so 
fragrant as two or three of the wood-ferns. They are ovate- 
lanceolate in outline, tapering very gradually from just above 
the rather broad base to a long and slender apex. 
The pinnae repeat in miniature the outline of the frond. 
In all but the lower pinnae of the very largest fronds the 
secondary rachises are narrowly wing-margined by the decur- 
rent bases of the adnate segments or pinnules. These seg- 
ments are oblong-ovate, mostly obtuse, pinnatifid often rather 
more than half way to the midvein into oblong toothed lobes. 
The largest pinnae are from three to six inches long; the 
pinnules from half an inch to an inch long; the lobes 
from one to three lines long, and the teeth about the fourth 
part of a line. The veins and veinlets are all free; the latter 
so branched that a veinlet runs to every one of the minute 
lobules or teeth. 
A fertile frond, as is very common in ferns, is fertile 
only in its upper half, the lower pinnae being usually sterile. 
The fruit-dots are very minute, and are placed on the lowest 
tooth on the upper side of the lobes of the segments. Com- 
