LASTREA. 
113 
toothed Buckler Fern, is a rather erect-growing kind, with 
a stout creeping stem or root-stock, which becomes branched, 
so that several crowns are generally found forming one 
mass, these crowns being readily separable; and in this 
way the species may be increased with much facility. The 
stipes is rather sparingly furnished with semi-transparent 
scales of a broad or bluntly ovate form, in which particular 
it agrees with cristata, and uliginosa, but differs from 
dilatata and cemula. The fronds grow from one to three 
feet high, and are bipinnate, the pinnae having an obliquely 
tapering form, from the inferior pinnules being larger than 
the superior ones ; this is most obvious at the base of the 
fronds, where the pinnae are broader than they are towards 
the apex. The lower pinnules on the basal pinnae are of 
an oblong form, somewhat narrowing upwards, the margins 
deeply incised, the lobes being serrated, and the teeth 
somewhat spinulose ; those towards the apex of each pinna, 
as well as the basal ones of the pinnae nearer the apex of 
the frond, become gradually less and less compound; so 
that, although the margins are still furnished with spinu¬ 
lose teeth, they gradually lose the deep lobes which are 
found on the lowest pinnae. In all the more compound 
Ferns, there is a similar difference of form according to the 
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