Asplenium .] 
FERNS. 
10.— ASPLENIUM FILIX-FCEMINA. 
LADY FERN. 
(Plate V, fig. 4.) 
Cha. — Leaf lanceolate, bipinnate. Pinnee tapering, pointed. 
Pinnules oblong, pinnatifid. Leaf-stalk scaly below, smooth above. 
Syn. — Asplenium Filix-fcemina, Hook., Mack., Spreng., Bernh. — Aspidium 
Filix-foemina, Swz., Willd., Smith, Hook, in Ft. Sco., Galp. — Polypodium 
Filix-fcemina, Linn., Light/., Hulls., Bolt., Dicks., With. — Polypod. ovato- 
crenatum, Hoffm. — Athyrium Fil.-fcem., Roth., Decan., Presl, Newm., Bab. 
Moore. 
Fig .—E. B. 1459.— Flo. Dan. 1346.— Bolt. 25 .—Pluk. Phyt. 180, /. 4. 
— Newm. p. 63. 
Des. — Rootstock large, tufted. Leaf-stalk with few scales above, 
green (rarely purple), the naked part very short. Leaf bipinnate, 
lanceolate, long-pointed, and tapering at the base, 12 to 20 inches 
high, dark green, very delicate in habit, often recurved. Pinnae 
alternate, from twenty to forty pairs, oblong, tapering gradually to a 
point, the lower ones sometimes drooping. Pinnules very numerous, 
oblong, rather blunt, pinnatifid, or inciso-serrate, the serratures 
minutely toothed, but not aristate, the lower pair close to and 
parallel with the rachis. Sori solitary, near the base of the pinnules, at 
first linear-reniform, at length round, but not confluent. Indusium 
jagged, white, oblong or reniform. 
[A very variable Fern, the forms of which some authors distribute into two 
species or more. The erect, narrowly lanceolate form, with linear pinnules, is A. 
Rhaeticum, Roth. (fig. Moore, 1853, p. 137). The broadly lanceolate, drooping 
form, with flat, oblong-lanceolate pinnules, is A. Filix-fcemina, Roth. (fig. Moore, 
1853, p. 140).] 
Sit. — Its natural habitation is swampy woods and damp hedgerows ; or, as 
Sir Walter Scott incidentally remarks in his novel of ‘ Waverley,’ — 
“ Where the copse- wood is the greenest, 
Where the fountain glistens sheenest, 
Where the morning dew lies longest. 
There the Lady Fern grows strongest.” 
Hah. — Pretty freely distributed over the southern and midland counties of 
England and Ireland, though it is by no means abundant in North Wales or 
North Scotland, except in particular neighbourhoods. 
Geo. — Throughout Europe ; and from Canada to Virginia, in North America. 
