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TRUE MAIDEN HAIR. 
ADIANTUM CAPILLUS VENERIS,\ 
Linnaeus and all other Writers. 
(Plate I.) 
This is the only British species of the genus, and is 
easily recognised by its fan-shaped leaflets, and the 
little wiry black stalks which support them, so thin 
and hair-like as to have given rise to its specific name. 
It grows from nine to fifteen inches high, in circular 
masses, and is of a light bright green colour and 
very ornamental in appearance. Its slender creeping 
rhizome is shaggy, with black hair-like scales, and 
the base of the stipes is of a rich red-brown colour. 
The pinnules are very irregular in shape, but mostly 
wedge-shaped, or tapering at the base, with rounded 
or egg-shaped apex; and they have generally some 
variation of a fan-shaped outline. The veins in all the 
pinnules are two-branched or forked from the base, 
and extend in straight lines to the margins, where, in 
the barren fronds, they end in the marginal notches, 
but in the fertile fronds extend into the indusium, and 
form receptacles for the spore-cases. The sori are very 
small, and chiefly seated on the under part of the 
lobes of the higher pinnules, which thus form a mem¬ 
branous indusium for the development of the clusters 
of fructification. 
