[1]Milde indicates several other unimportant variations; and Hooker & Baker have as varieties of this species the East Indian Aspidium cochleatum, and Aspidium elongatum, from Madeira and the Canary Islands. The latter they give as occurring also in the southern United States, evidently supposing it to be the long-lost A. Ludovicianum of Kunze. For abundant synonymy of Aspidium Filix-mas the student is referred especially to the works of Hooker, Milde, Mettenius and Moore, as quoted above.
[2]See the “Flora of New York” for some figures of laciniated and forking fronds.
[3]Prof. Amos Eaton, grandfather of the present writer. Eaton’s “Manual of Botany” went through eight editions from 1817 to 1841.
[4]I find one or two instances of a slight enlargement of the apex, as if there were an attempt to form a proliferous bud.
[5]“In O. sensibilis the sori are borne on the middle of the vein, and consist of a tough cylindrical receptacle, three or four diameters in height, bearing sporangia thickly all over its surface, and covered when young by a delicate hood-like indusium, attached half-way or more around the base of the receptacle on the inferior side, and having the crenulate-margined opening toward the apex of the segment. At an early stage the blackberry-shaped sorus is almost entirely covered by the indusium, which resembles a closely drawn cowl, but with the growth of the sporangia it is thrown back, or rent, and soon disappears, the sori becoming confluent. The receptacle is very persistent, and may be seen, covered with the stalks of the sporangia, in the dried last-year’s fertile fronds, which are always found where the plant grows.”
