140 
BEAUTIFUL FERNS. 
Scoiopendrium rhizophyllum, Endlicher, Gen. PI., Suppl. i., p. 1348. — 
Hooker, Sp. Fil., iv., p. 4. — Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 248 
Had. — On mossy rocks, especially limestone. Not uncommon from 
Canada to Virginia and Alabama, and westward to Wisconsin and Kansas. 
It occurs in many places in Western New England, but is rare to the east. 
It has lately been found a few miles from Boston ; but there is a doubt 
whether the station is truly natural. 
Description. — The walking-leaf is usually found in patches 
of considerable extent. It seems to prefer mossy calcareous rocks, 
and the finest specimens are usually firmly rooted in the crevices. 
In Cheshire, Connecticut, it grows freely on moist cliffs of sand- 
stone bordering a deep ravine ; and in Orange, in the same State, 
it is found on scattered ledges of serpentine. The root-stock is 
very short, but creeping : it bears a few dark-fuscous scales, and 
is covered with the remains of decayed stalks. A few fronds 
grow from the end of the root-stock, and are supported on slender 
herbaceous stems a few inches long. A transverse section of the 
lower part of the stalk is semicircular, and shows a very slender 
triangular central thread of dark sclerenchyma, with two some- 
what roundish fibro-vascular bundles close beneath or behind it. 
A section higher up shows that the stalk is there narrowly winged 
on each side, and the two fibro-vascular bundles have coalesced 
into one of a roundish-triangular shape. The frond is long and 
narrow, and rarely rises erect, but usually is decumbent or reclined 
in position. 
The wings of the stalk widen out into a wedge-shaped base, 
which is sunken in a sinus between two basal auricles of the 
