Beautiful Ferns

Daniel Eaton

Daniel Cady Eaton

Beautiful Ferns

ADIANTUM PEDATUM, Linnæus.

American Maiden-hair

Adiantum pedatum: – Root-stock creeping, scaly, and copiously rooting; stalks scattered, a foot or more high, dark-brown and polished, forked at the top; fronds six to fifteen inches broad, membranaceous, smooth, spreading nearly horizontally, composed of several (six to fourteen) slender divisions radiating from the outer side of the recurved branches of the stalk, and bearing numerous oblong or triangular-oblong short-stalked pinnules having the lower margin entire and often slightly concave, the base parallel with the polished hairlike rachis, the upper margin lobed or cleft and bearing a few oblong-lunate or transversely linear reflexed involucres; sporangia on the inner surface of the involucres (as in all Adianta), borne on the extended apices of the free forking veinlets, which proceed from a principal vein closely parallel to the lower margin of the pinnule.

Adiantum pedatum, Linnæus, Sp. Pl., p. 1557. – Thunberg, Flora Japonica, p. 339. – Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 121. – Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 107, t. 115. – Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 438. – Michaux, Fl. Bor. Am., ii., p. 263. – Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept., ii., p. 670. – Torrey, Fl. of N. Y., ii., p. 487. – Gray, Manual. – Ruprecht, Distrib. Crypt. Vasc., in Imp. Ross., p. 49. – Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 28. – Brackenridge, Filices of the U. S. Expl. Exped., p. 100. – Eaton, in Parry’s Exped. to Japan, ii., p. 329. – Maximowicz, Primitiæ Fl. Amurensis, p. 341. – Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 47; Prolusio Fl. Japon. in Ann. Mus. Bot. Lugd. – Batav., iii., p. 171. – Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 125. – Milde, Fil. Eur. et Atl., p. 31. – Keyserling, Gen. Adiantum, in Mem. Acad. Petrop., ser. vii., xxii., No. 2, pp. 5, 28.

Adiantum Americanum, Cornutus, Canad. Pl. Hist., p. 7, t. 6 (1635).

Maiden Hair, or Cappellus veneris verus, Josselyn, New Englands Rarities Discovered, p. 55 (1672).

Adiantum fronde supra-decomposita bipartita, foliis partialibus alternis, foliolis trapeziformibus obtusis, Gronovius, Flora Virginica (1739), p. 123. (For other ancient references see Linnæus, as quoted above.)

Adiantum boreale, Presl, Tent. Pterid., p. 158.

Hab. – In rich, moist woods, especially among rocks. Common from New Brunswick and Canada southward to Central Alabama, Professor Eugene A. Smith, and westward to Lake Superior, Wisconsin, and Arkansas. Also in Utah, California, Oregon, British Columbia, the islands of Alaska, Kamtschatka, Japan, Mantchooria, and the Himalayan provinces of India. Ruprecht speaks of specimens from Newfoundland, and Professor Gray informs me that it exists in De La Pylaie’s collection from that island.

Description. – The root-stock is elongated and creeping. It is about the diameter of a goose-quill, is covered with minute ovate scales, roots copiously from beneath and along the sides, and produces fronds from the right and left sides alternately. The stalks are usually from a foot to fifteen inches high, and from half a line to a line in thickness. When very young, they bear a few scattered narrow scales; but these soon fall off, leaving minute pointed scars. The mature stalk is roundish in section, the convexity being greatest on the side which corresponds to the under surface of the frond. The two convexities, anterior and posterior, are separated by two obscure angles or ridges, which extend the whole length of the stalk. The anterior, or flatter, convex surface is nearly black, while the other side is a dark purplish brown. The fibro-vascular bundle is U-shaped near the base of the stalk; but higher up it is more like a broad, open V; and just below the forking of the stalk it separates into two portions. The two branches of the stalk diverge at an angle of about fifty degrees, and rise obliquely, gracefully recurving till they nearly meet again. From the outer side of the curve each branch sends out from two to seven slender diverging branchlets, which are the rachises of