Aspidium Filix-mas:—Root-stock short, stout, ascending or erect; stalks rarely over a foot long, very chaffy with large lanceolate-acuminate scales and smaller ones intermixed; fronds standing in a crown, one to three feet long, half-evergreen, firm-membranaceous, broadly oblong-lanceolate, slightly narrowed toward the base, pinnate or sub-bipinnate; pinnÆ lanceolate-acuminate from a broad base, pinnatifid almost or rarely quite to the midrib; segments smooth and full-green above, slightly paler and bearing a few little chaffy scales beneath, normally oblong, obtuse or even truncate, slightly toothed, in another form ovate-lanceolate, acutish and pinnately incised; veins free, forked or pinnately branched into from two to five veinlets; sori rather large, nearer the midvein than the margin, commonly occurring only on the lower half or two-thirds of each segment; indusia convex when young, rather firm, smooth or minutely glandular, orbicular-reniform.

Aspidium Filix-mas, Swartz, in Schraders Journal, ii., (1800) p. 38; Syn. Fil., p. 55.—Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 45, t. 44.—Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 259.—Link, Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 105.—Ruprecht, Distr. Krypt. Vasc, in Imp. Ross., p. 35.—Kunze, in Sill. Journ., July, 1848, p. 83.—Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 92; Aspidium, p. 55.—Eaton, in Gray’s Manual, ed. v., p. 666.—Milde, in Nov. Act. Acad. Nat. Cur., xxvi., ii., p. 507; Fil. Eur. et Atl., p. 118.—Miquel, Prolusio Fl. Jap., p. 117.

Polypodium Filix-mas, LinnÆus, Sp. Pl. p. 1551.

Polystichum Filix-mas, Roth, “Fl. Germ., iii., p. 82.”—Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ, et Helv., ed. iii., p. 733.

Nephrodium Filix-mas, Richard, “in Desvaux, MÉm. Soc. Linn., vi., p. 60.”—Hooker, Brit. Ferns, t. 15; Sp. Fil., iv., p. 117.—Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 272 (excl. vars. ? and d).

Dryopteris Filix-mas, Schott, Gen. Fil.—Newman, Hist. Brit. Ferns, ed. iii., p. 184.

Lastrea Filix-mas, Presl, Tent. Pterid., p. 76.—Moore, Brit. Ferns, Nat. Pr., t. xiv, xv, xvi, xvii.

Var. incisum, Mettenius:—Frond ample, two to three feet long, scantily chaffy on the rachis; segments rather distant, lanceolate, tapering to a sub-acute point, incised on the margins with serrated lobules; indusium rather delicate, in age shrivelling or falling off.—Aspidium, p. 55; Milde, Fil. Eur. et Atl., p. 120.—Lastrea Filix-mas, var. incisa, Moore, l.c.—Nephrodium Filix-mas, var. affine, Hooker & Baker. l.c.

Var. paleaceum, Mettenius:—Frond ample, two to three feet long, stalk and rachis very chaffy with ferruginous or blackish scales; segments oblong, truncate, nearly entire on the margins; indusium coriaceous, the edges much incurved, sometimes splitting in two.—Aspidium, p. 55; Milde, Fil. Eur. Atl., p. 121.—Lastrea Filix-mas, var. paleacea, Moore, l.c.—Aspidium paleaceum, Don, “Prodr. Fl. Nepal., p. 4;” Fournier, Pl. Mex., Crypt., p. 92. Aspidium parallelogrammum, Kunze, in LinnÆa, xiii., p. 146, etc.—Nephrodium Filix-mas, var. parallelogrammum, Hooker, Sp. Fil., iv., p. 116.—Dichasium parallelogrammum and D. patentissimum, FÉe, Gen. Fil., p. 302, t. xxiii, B.—Lastrea truncata, Brackenridge, Fil. of U. S. Expl. Exped., p. 195, t. 27 (admirable).[1]

Hab.—In one form or another, this species occurs in America from Greenland to Peru, throughout Europe and Asia, in parts of Africa, and in many islands of the ocean. The ordinary European form corresponding to Moore’s plate XIV has been collected in British Columbia by Dr. Lyall, in Keweenaw Peninsula of Northern Michigan by Dr. Robbins, and in the mountains of Colorado by Messrs. Hall & Harbour and Mr. Brandegee. Var. incisum was found at the base of calcareous rocks at Royston Park, Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada, by Mrs. Roy, and in the mountains of Colorado by Dr. Scovill, for one of whose specimens I am indebted to D. A. Watt, Esq., of Montreal. Fragments of apparently the same form have been received from Dakota. The Californian plant mentioned in PlantÆ HartwegianÆ, p. 342, is better regarded as a form of Aspidium rigidum. Var. paleaceum has not been found in either Canada or the United States, but is well known in Mexico, in Europe, in Southern Asia, in the Hawaiian Islands, etc.

Description:—This fern has a stout, usually ascending, but sometimes erect, very chaffy root-stock, very much like that of the species last described. It sometimes rises a little above the surface of the ground, forming a short trunk.

The stalks seem to vary a good deal in length, being sometimes only two or three inches long, and at other times over a foot. They are clustered at the growing end of the root-stock, and their bases, which remain long after the rest has perished, are consolidated with the root-stock. The stalks are always more or less chaffy, the chaff mainly confined to the lowest portion in some plants, and in others following the stalk and the rachis to the apex of the frond. The largest scales are sometimes fully an inch long. They are narrowly lanceolate-acuminate, distantly ciliate-denticulate on the margin, and composed of narrow but somewhat sinuous cells. Mixed in with them are smaller scales, from two to four lines long, and more distinctly ciliate-toothed. The color of the scales is different in different specimens, varying from bright golden-brown to ferruginous-brown with a darker spot at the base, and from this to nearly black, especially in the sub-tropical and tropical forms of var. paleaceum. Such specimens are sometimes fairly shaggy with the abundance of scales, which are also found, decreasing in number and in size, on the midribs of the pinnÆ, and even on the lower surface of the segments. The usual number of fibro-vascular bundles is seven.

The fronds are broadly lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate in outline, usually narrowed a little, or even conspicuously narrowed, at the base, and acute or acuminate at the apex. They are of a full herbaceous green above, a little paler beneath, and of a rather firmly membranaceous, or, in tropical forms, of a sub-coriaceous texture. Their average length is from one to two feet, but fronds three feet long are occasionally seen; and one very fine example of var. paleaceum, collected in Chiapas, Mexico, by Dr. Ghiesbreght, is three feet and a half long, exclusive of the stalk.

The pinnÆ are sometimes very numerous; as many as forty on each side have been counted on very large fronds, but the number is more commonly less than twenty. They are lanceolate-acuminate in shape, tapering from a broad base to a slender point; in the common form their average breadth at the base is half to three-fourths of an inch, but in var. incisum they are often fully two inches broad at the base. Their length is from three or four inches in the common form to six or seven inches in the largest specimens I have seen. The midrib of the pinnÆ is always more or less winged, so that the pinnÆ may be said to be pinnatifid, and the segments to be connected by a narrow wing.

The shape of the segments differs in the several varieties; in the type they are very close together, oblong, with a rounded apex, and not very deeply toothed: in var. paleaceum they are also closely-placed, and oblong, but mostly truncate at the apex; and in var. incisum they are much larger and less closely-placed, ovate-lanceolate in shape, and incised with toothed lobes along the sides.

The veins are free, and are forked or alternately divided into from two to five veinlets. The sori are rather large, placed nearer the midvein than the margin, and are rarely produced towards the apex of the segments.

The indusium is orbicular-reniform, and almost always smooth. Its edges are turned downward, enclosing the sporangia, when they are young, and sometimes this convexity is permanent. Rarely the sinus is so deep that the indusium at last becomes divided. The spores are ovoid, and have a muricately roughened surface.

The rhizomes have been used for ages as an anthelmintic, but probably have no greater virtue in this direction than those of many other common species.