XIX OPHIOGI.O33UM. 
219 
beneath the surface, and produce a new plant at a short 
distance from the old. The old crowns produce a new 
frond annually, as is the case with Botrychium, but in 
this the rudimentary plant 
is exterior to the stipes, 
instead of being enclosed 
within its base, as is the 
case in Botrychium. The 
fronds are erect, from three 
or four inches to a foot in 
heighth, smooth, annual, 
growing in April and 
May, and perishing in the 
course of the summer. The 
stipes is erect, smooth, of 
variable length, round, 
hollow and succulent, tra- 
versed by bundles of woody 
fibre; and becoming di- 
vided above into an entire 
ovate leaf- like sessile frond, 
and an erect linear stalked 
spike of fructification. The 
spore-cases are thus formed 
on the margins of a con- 
trated branch of the frond. 
The frond is traversed by [Ophioglossum vnlgatnm.] 
irregular anastomosing slender veins. The fertile spike 
springs from the inner base of the leaf-branch, and is 
distinctly stalked, the stalk varying from an inch to se- 
veral inches long : it is linear, very slightly tapering up- 
wards, and consists of two lines or series of crowded mar- 
ginal embedded spore-cases, opening transversely, the 
gaping concave cases when empty appearing like a series 
of spherical cavities along the margins. The fructification 
is mature in June. In some rare cases, more than one 
fertile spike is developed on each plant. 
