PELL^A GRACILIS, Hooker. 
Slender Cliff-Brake. 
Pell^a gracilis: — Root-stock slender, creeping, cord- 
like, scantily furnished with little ovate appressed scales ; 
stalks scattered, slender, a span long or less, brownish-stra- 
mineous, somewhat shining, darker and slightly chaffy at the 
base; fronds two to four inches long, thin and tender, smooth, 
ovate or ovate-oblong, pinnate; pinnae few, the lower two to 
four pairs once or twice pinnatifid, the uppermost simple; seg- 
ments of the sterile fronds adnate-decurrent, roundish-obovate. 
crenately lobed and toothed; those of the taller fertile fronds 
lanceolate or linear-oblong, and more distinct, entire or auri 
cled, terminal ones longest; veins rather distant, mostly once 
forked; involucre broad and continuous, delicately membra 
naceous. 
Pellcea gracilis, Hooker, Sp. Fil., li., p. 138, t. cxxxiii, B. — Eaton, 
in Gray’s Manual, ed. v., p. 659; Ferns of the South-West, 
p. 319. — Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 145. — Porter & 
Coulter, Syn. FI. Colorado, p. 153. 
Pteris gracilis, Michaux, FI. Bor.-Am., ii., p. 262. — Swartz, Syn. Fil., 
p. 99. WiLLDENOW, Sp. PI., V., p. 376. PuRSH, FI. Am. 
Sept., ii., p. 668. — Hooker, FI. Bor". -Am., ii., p. 264. 
