58 ASPLEMTJM TRICHOMANES. 
, ASPLE'NIUM TRICHO'MANES. 
THIS is the Common Maidenhair Spleenwort, Common 
Wall Spleenwort, English Maidenhair, and English 
Slack Maidenhair of our native herbalists. 
The main body of the root is short, thick, dark pur- 
plish-chesnut, tufted, and furnished with many wiry 
rootlets of the same colour. From the tuft of the root 
arise many evergreen fronds, usually erect, but often 
spreading. They vary in length from two to twelve 
inches, and are simply a stalk clothed from the very 
bottom to the top with leafits. The stalk is smooth, 
very stiff, purplish-brown, and channelled in front. 
The leafits are very dark green, numerous, nearly stalk 
less, more or less alternate, about a quarter-of-an-inch 
long, gradually diminishing in size towards the top and 
bottom of the frond, oval but blunt at the upper end, 
and partially and irregularly scolloped at the upper 
edge. Fructification in six or eight masses, oblong, 
parallel to each other, but attached to the lateral veins 
passing obliquely from the mid-vein. The lateral veins 
divide into two, and sometimes three branches ; the 
upper branch bearing the fructification. The membrane, 
or indusium, which covers the fructification, is whitish, 
and it separates with a wavy edge from the oblique 
vein to which it was attached, and then exposes the 
capsules of sori, which are dark buff, or brown, and 
soon run together, or, as it i technically termed, 
become confluent. 
