

72 THE BRITISH FERNS. 
varieties, one of which, obovatum, is found only in the south of 
Europe. The apex of the frond is bifid or multifid, but this is not 
permanent; and plants of proliferous habit have been observed, but 
this proliferous condition of the plant is exceedingly scarce, and is 
no doubt the result of some peculiarity in cultivation. The other 
forms known to us are— 
1. microdon (M.). This is a most remarkable variety, so little 
divided that one is almost tempted to consider it a distinct species. 
In our folio edition, when the plant was but little known, and had 
only been seen of small size, it was regarded as a variety of Asple- 
nium marinum, but the more vigorous fronds which it has subse- 
quently produced, prove it to belong rather to Asplenium lanceolatum. 
The stipes is rather short, dark brown at the base, clothed with 
small hair scales; these also occur along the lower portion of the 
rachis, the back of which half-way up is brown like the base of the 
stipes. The fronds are irregularly linear, scarcely linear-lanceolate, 
with a tapered point, six to ten or twelve inches high, pinnate. The 
pinn® are distinct but approximate in the lower part of the frond, 
shortly stalked, pyramidal, the lowermost triangular, all oblique 
from the greater development of the anterior side, sometimes sub- 
hastate, more or less deflexed, tapering to a blunt point; the upper 
pinn® are shorter, orowded, more or less adnate with the slightly 
margined rachis, which is hair-scaly below. The pinnæ are lobed 
and undulated at the margin; the basal lobes rounded and divided 
nearly to the costà, but they overlap so that the division is not 
apparent; the divisions become shallower upwards, the lobes and 
confluent apex distantly toothed with small transparent apiculate 
teeth. In some of the lower pinne the anterior lobe is so much 
enlarged that the pinna appears to be unequally bifid, and the basal 
lobe is usually very much more separated than the rest. The sori 
are short oblong, smallish, distant from the costa, and covered by 
membranous wavy-margined indusia; they are usually placed on the 
anterior side of the veins opening anteriorly, as in Asplenium gene- 
rally, but sometimes even in the less divided parts of the pinnæ they 
are here and there reversed and open towards the base, and scattered 
sori may be found, which are diplazioid, scolopendrioid, or even 

