ASPIDIUM FILIX-MAS, Swartz. 
Male Fern. 
Aspidium Filix-mas: — Root-stock short, stout, ascending 
or erect; stalks rarely over a foot long, very chaffy with 
large lanceolate-acuminate scales and smaller ones intermixed ; 
fronds standing in a crown, one to three feet long, half-ever- 
green, firm-membranaceous, broadly oblong-lanceolate, slightly 
narrowed toward the base, pinnate or sub-bipinnate; pinnae 
lanceolate-acuminate from a broad base, pinnatifid almost 
or rarely quite to the midrib; segments smooth and full-green 
above, slightly paler and bearing a few little chaffy scales 
beneath, normally oblong, obtuse or even truncate, slightly 
toothed, in another form ovate-lanceolate, acutish and pin- 
nately incised; veins free, forked or pinnately branched into 
from two to five veinlets; sori rather large, nearer the 
midvein than the margin, commonly occurring only on the 
lower half or two-thirds of each segment ; indusia convex 
when young, rather firm, smooth or minutely glandular, 
orbicular-reniform. 
Aspidium Filix-mas, Swartz, in Schraders Journal, ii., (1800) p. 38; 
Syn. Fil., p. 55. — Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 45, t. 44. — 
WiLLDENOw, Sp. PI., V., p. 259. — Link, Fil. Hort. Berol., 
