152 LAVi'R/EA FILIX.-MA8. 
"LASTILE'A FI'LIX-MAS. 
THIS has been called by various botanists a Polypodium, 
an Aspidium, a Polystichum, and a Dryopteris; but in 
every instance they adopted the specific name, filix-mas, 
because it is the acknowledged " Male Fern " of our 
most ancient herbalists. Male Fern is its most generally 
admitted English name; but it has also been called 
Male Polypody, Male Shield Fern, and Common Buckler 
Fern. 
Root black, tufted, scaly, large, with numerous dark 
brown, deeply - penetrating rootlets. Fronds several, 
rising in a circle, erect, from two to four feet high. The 
general outline would be spear-head shaped, if the 
lowest pair of leaflets were not much shorter than those 
next above them, rendering the form more ovate, but 
pointed. Less than a fifth of the stem is without leaflets, 
but this unleafleted portion is covered with a profusion 
of chaffy scales, which extend, indeed, over the entire 
stalk and mid-ribs. Leaflets alternate, very equal in 
width until near their end, when they rapidly taper 
to a point. Leajits oblong, blunt, roundish-toothed, 
numerous, crowded, stalkless, for the most part distinct, 
but sometimes rather united at the base , both surfaces 
smooth, but there is an indent on the upper surface, 
over the place where is each mass of fructification. 
Fructification in circular masses, tawny, ranged closely 
in short rows near each side of the lower half of the 
mid-rib of each leafit ; cover (indusium) kidney-shaped, 
