



THE BRITISH FERNS. _ 
Genus VII: ASPLENIUM, Linneus. 
GEN. CHAR.—Sori indusiate, linear, short or elongate, oblique ; 
the receptacles lateral on the anterior side of the veins. Indusium 
linear, membranaceous, plane or fornicate. Veins simple or forked 
from a central costa, sometimes simple and costeform in the 
ultimate narrowly-cut segments; or forked from the base of 
the segments, the costa being evanescent or wanting; venules 
parallel, direct, free. 
Fronds coriaceous, herbaceous, or membranaceous ; simple lobed 
pinnate bipinnate or variously decompound, rarely rachiform ; the 
rachis or veins sometimes proliferous. Sori usually on the anterior 
side of the venules, but often inverse in the basal auricles, some- 
times double, t.e., diplazioid, or scolopendrioid. 
Caudex short, erect or decumbent, rarely creeping, sometimes 
stoloniferous. 
This very extensive and rather variable genus of Ferns is tolerably 
well represented in the British Flora, nine species being found in 
Great Britain, and these representing two of the four principal 
groups into which the genus is separated. Its nearest affinity among 
the British Ferns is with Athyrium, from which it differs in having 
straight sori, the fructifications not being recurved, or if ‘occasionally 
slightly crescentic, neither hamate nor hippocrepiform. It is also 
related to Scolopendrium, from which it differs in having the fructi- 
fications normally single, not growing in pairs standing face to 
face. Its straight linear simple oblique sori, therefore, separate it 
on either hand from these allied genera. 
The fructification of Asplenium, like that of Athyrium and 
Scolopendrium, is lateral on the veins; that is to say, instead of 
growing up from the back or mid-surface of the veins, as the naked 
dots of the Polypodiee and the indusiate dots of the Aspidiee do, 
its spore-cases grow along the side of the vein which forms the 

