THE FORKED SPLEEN WORT, 
Asplenium septentrionale, — Hull. 
This is another of the small and rare Ferns, though 
more widely distributed than A. qermanicum, and 
growing to an elevation of 3,000 feet, tufted some¬ 
times in large masses and grassy-looking, differing 
from A. qermanicum (which some botanists consider a 
variety of it) by its fronds being either simple with 
mere lobes, or forked with two distinct branches, each 
like its own smaller fronds, and never being regularly 
pinnate as A. germanicum is. It is also narrower in 
its parts, with a thicker texture, and less leafy. The 
fronds are from two to six inches long, slender, and of 
a dull green ; the stipes is rather long and dark purple 
at the base ; the leafy part of the frond, hardly to be 
called leafy, is narrow elongated lance-shaped, split 
near the end into two or sometimes three alternate 
divisions, or, in the smaller fronds, into as many teeth, 
each of the divisions of the frond having its margin 
cut into two or more sharp-pointed teeth, the points 
of the larger teeth very frequently split again. The 
forked fronds are indefinite in form and apparently 
one-sided, one division being smaller than the other, 
and looking like a side branch with nothing to balance 
