















218 THE BRITISH FERNS. 
name. We append a more complete description of this plant, than 
of our other varieties, for the convenience of those who still regard 
it as a distinct species :一 
Caudex stoutish, decumbent or slowly creeping in a horizontal 
direction, with the fronds growing erect from its apex; branched, 
sometimes more or less tufted, slightly scaly, formed of the enlarged 
and enduring bases of the decayed fronds, surrounding a woody axis. 
Scales resembling those of the stipes. Fibres coarse, numerous, 
branched, dark brown. 
Vernation cireinate ; sometimes in this plant the rachis is simply 
circinate, but in other cases besides the ordinary involution, there is 
also a lateral curvature; the pinne and pinnules are all separately 
involute. 
Stipes terminal and adherent to the caudex, nearly as long as 
the leafy part of the frond, stoutish, dark brown-purple at the base ; 
sparsely scaly, with broad-ovate membranaceous pale-brown scales 
of which many become at length more or less appressed ; the scales 
are most numerous near the base. Rachis stoutish, channelled in 
front, scarcely at all scaly, pale green, smooth. 
Fronds from two to four or five feet in height, erect, herbaceous, 
yellowish green, narrow oblong-lanceolate tapering at the apex, 
bipinnate. Pinne numerous, opposite or subopposite below, often 
becoming more alternate above; the lower ones distant, obliquely 
triangular, from the greater size of the posterior basal pinnules, 
measuring (in average specimens, two feet or upwards in height) 
about four inches in length, and three inches across the base, of 
whieh latter the posterior pinnules measure nearly two inches; the 
upper ones are less distant and narrower, of an elongate triangular 
outline, those just above the middle measuring four and a half 
inehes long, and barely two inches broad at the base, where the 
posterior and anterior pinnules are of nearly equal size. The pinne 
are stalked, frequently more or less drooping, and often twisted so 
as to turn their upper surface towards the apex of the frond, but 
this peculiar twisting is less marked than in cristata. Pinnules 
oblong acute, broadest at the base, the lower ones with a short 
stalk-like attachment, the upper more or less adnate; the basal 
pinnules (of the pinne half-way up the fertile fronds) pinnatifid 

