200 
XV. TBICHOMAXES. 
The Bristle Fern, one of the most rare and delicate of 
all our native species, has an elongated creeping dark 
coloured rooting caudex, clothed with small thick-set 
narrow articulated scales, or bristles. The fronds, which 
are circinate in vernation, and from six inches to a foot 
lon^, consist of hard win- branched ribs, or veins, each 
' Trichomanes radicans.] 
furnished throughout with a semi-membranous, pellucid 
wing, becoming more or less consolidated, van-ing in outlii e 
from angular ovate approaching triangular, to oblong- 
acuminate, or lanceolate, the latter being the form of what 
ha* been considered a variety and called Andrewtit 
They are lateral and adherent to the caudex from which 
they spring np solitary here and there, as it extends ovei 
