WOODSTA. 
125 
8. Woo&sia IIvens£s 5 Br. Oblong Woodsia. 
Candex sliort and thick. Boots numerous and matted. Fronds 
from 2 to 6 inches in height, tufted, compact, lanceolate, and 
pinnate. Leaflets oblong, the margin narrowly lobed. Stem 
chestnut, glossy and scaly. Sori on the margin of the leaflets. 
The name is derived from the Isle of Elba, where this 
fern was first discovered. 
This dainty little fern parts with its fronds in the 
same manner and under the 
same circumstances as its sister 
species W. hyperboreo . The 
fronds grow in a tufted form ; 
the texture of the pinnae is 
thick, the colour dull, they are 
hairy above and below ; the 
stem is covered with slender 
scales of a reddish hue, which 
impart their tint to the whole 
frond. 
This species, though suffi- 
ciently rare, is found in seve- 
ral British habitats, as upon 
Snowdon, the Breadalbane 
and Clova Mountains, and the hills of Westmoreland and 
Durham. Mr. Backhouse found it upon the Falcon 
Clints, in Teesdale, but last year we sought it there 
in vain. The Cystopteris fragilis grew there in abun- 
dance, as he describes it, at the foot of many a bush of 
Bird-cherry, but no single frond of the Woodsia could 
we descry. He has also found it growing freely upon 
the Dumfriesshire mountains, as he states in a letter to 
the f Phytologist/ 
