188 OPHIOGLOSSUM VULGATL'M. 
/OPHIOGLO'SSUM VULGA'TUM. 
THAT this is a Fern very distinct from all others is de- 
monstrated by the fact that it has never received from 
botanists any other generic name than Ophioglossuni , 
and with but a solitary exception no other specific 
name than that under which we notice it. The ex- 
ception is 0. ovatum, the name uuder which it is de- 
scribed by Mr. Salisbury. Its English name is equally 
unique, being known by no other than Adder's Tongue. 
The botanical name is merely a translation of this, 
derived from the Greek words opliis, a serpent, and 
qlossa, a tongue. 
Boot small, carrot - shaped, with numerous stout, 
yellow, smooth, fibrous rootlets, spreading horizontally. 
Frond from three to nine, and even more inches high ; 
its stem pale green, round, hollow, and tapering down- 
wards; the barren lobe of the frond, usually called the 
leaf, stalkless, solitary, egg-shaped, lurid green, nearly 
upright, sheathing the stem; the fertile lobe, which 
gives the plant its name, from its somewhat tongue-like 
shape, is really a spike of fructification, as in the 
Botryehium and Osmunda ; it rises from withinside the 
base of the barren lobe, stalked, narrow, slightly taper- 
ing upwards, pointed, bearing the fructification in a 
line along each of its two edges ; the fructification is 
embedded in roundish, yellow masses, which, gaping 
when the spores have escaped, present a series of clefts 
