Page:Wayside and Woodland Blossoms.djvu/259

Rh

A common plant locally on rocks and walls, having a slender dark-brown polished rachis and a large number of roundish-oblong leaflets (pinnæ), arranged pinnately on each side. The capsules will be found in short thick lines on the under surface. There is a similar species, the Green Spleen wort (A. viride), with a green, softer rachis and the pinnæ distinctly stalked, shorter and paler; growing on wet rocks in mountainous districts.

In the Male-fern—so-called by our fathers owing to its robust habit as compared with the tender grace of one they called Lady-fern (Asplenium filix-fæmina)—we have an advance in the intricacy of frond-division. Our page is not sufficiently large to represent the whole of the frond, but the portion we give shows that the pinnæ are themselves again divided into pinnules. This fern grows to a great size, its rootstock very thick and woody, its fronds erect and three or four feet high. As a rule the rachis and its continuation below the leafy portion (stipes) are shaggy with loose golden-brown scales. The spore-capsules are in little round heaps in rows along the pinnæ, and each heap is covered by a thin kidney-shaped involucre. Note in the unrolling of a young frond how beautifully the whole is packed up. The lateral divisions of the pinnæ are rolled each on itself, then the pinnæ are rolled up from their tips toward the rachis, and finally the whole frond is coiled up from the tip downwards. This is the characteristic vernation of ferns, and differs greatly from the packing of undeveloped leaves in the leaf-buds of flowering-plants.