COMMON MAIDEN-HAIR SPLEENWORT. 
Asplenium Trichomanes. — Linnaeus. 
The Common Maiden-hair Spleenwort is but a di- 
minutive plant, yet it is one of the most elegant of the 
hardy evergreens, noticeable for the contrast between 
its purply-black stipes (and rachis) and bright green 
pinnae, and for the regularity with which the latter are 
disposed. Its numerous small slender fronds, generally 
not more than from three to six inches long, though 
sometimes double that, grow in tufts in rock crannies, 
and delight in the crevices of old walls. Its fronds 
are simply pinnate, the pinnae small and numerous, 
equal- sized, roundishly-oblong, attached to the rachis 
by a stalk-like projection of their posterior base, the 
margins entire or crenated (with convex or round 
teeth). The pinnae are jointed to the rachis, and when 
old are readily displaced, leaving the black naked 
rachis among the other fronds. A distinct midvein 
passes through each pinnae, branching on each side 
into veins and venules, the anterior bearing the linear 
sori just within the margin of the pinnae. The sori, 
when young, have a thin indusium, with a rather 
round-toothed free margin, but when older become 
