BLECHNUM BOREALE. 
79 
BLE'CHNUM BOREA'LE. 
The English names by which this Fern is known are 
Rough Spleenwort, Northern Hard Fern, Rough Milt- 
waste, and Great or Wild Spleenwort. Its main root is 
black, scaly, tufted, and furnished with numerous stout 
rootlets. The fronds have a smooth and polished stalk 
but the leafless portion at the bottom is purple, shaggy 
and scaly. They are numerous, narrow-spear-head¬ 
shaped, tapering to a point at each end. The barren 
fronds, from eight to twelve inches high, are outermost 
evergreen, and become prostrate. They have nume¬ 
rous, dose, parallel, spear-head-shaped, entire, single- 
ribbed leaflets, rather blunt, but with a minute point. 
The fertile fronds, always erect, and from twelve to 
twenty-four inches high, are surrounded by the barren 
fronds, and are not so numerous, but are taller, and 
their leaflets are much narrower, more pointed, more 
spread out at their base, and more distant from each other 
than those on the barren fronds. Their edges are re¬ 
curved. The stalk mostly purple. The fructification is 
in a narrow line on each side of the mid-rib of each 
leaflet, and between two side veins which run slantingly 
upwards about half way to the edge of the leaflet, turn 
abruptly, aud then run parallel with the mid rib, 'ihe 
cover ( inilusium) is a whitish membrane, separating at 
the side next the rib, and exposing the very numerous 
crowded brown spores, each bound with a jointed ring. 
These are ripe about the end of August. All the 
