PELL^A ATROPURPUREA, Link. 
Clayton’s Cliff- Brake. 
Pell/EA ATROPURPUREA : — Root-stock short, knotted, 
chaffy with very narrow long-pointed soft cinnamon-brown 
scales; stalks four to eight inches high, terete, wiry, dark- 
purple or reddish-black, polished or more or less pubescent 
with paleaceous hairs ; fronds six to twelve inches long, 
ovate or oblong-lanceolate in outline, evergreen, subcoriaceous, 
pinnate, usually twice pinnate near the base ; rachises smooth 
or hairy; pinnae four to twelve pairs, the lower ones long- 
stalked, and divided into five to nine pinnules ; upper pinnae 
and the pinnules nearly sessile; oval to linear-oblong, at the 
base truncate or subcordate or sometimes hastate, obtuse or 
obtusely mucronulate, terminal ones longest ; veins obscure, 
mostly twice forked ; involucre rather broad, formed of the 
continuously recurved margin, paler and membranaceous on 
the edge, not fully covering the ripened sporangia. 
Pellcza atropurpurea. Link, Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 59. — Fee, Gen. Fil., 
p. 129. — Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 138. — Eaton, in Chapman’s 
Flora, p. 589; Gray’s Manual, ed. v., p. 660; Ferns ot the 
South-West, p, 319. — Lawson, in vCanad. Naturalist, i., p. 
