. A history of British ferns. Ferns. 274 HART S-TONGUE become horizontal, and at last pendulous ; they arrive at ma- turity by the end of September, and continue in full vigour throughout the winter, and until those of the ensuing year make their appearance. The form of the frond is elongate, linear, and quite undi- vided, acute at the apex and cordate at the base : the stipes varies from a fifth to a third of the entire length of the frond; it is of a dark purple colour, and rather scaly at the base : in some specimens, but these are generally young, the entire plant is hirsute,
. A history of British ferns. Ferns. 274 HART S-TONGUE become horizontal, and at last pendulous ; they arrive at ma- turity by the end of September, and continue in full vigour throughout the winter, and until those of the ensuing year make their appearance. The form of the frond is elongate, linear, and quite undi- vided, acute at the apex and cordate at the base : the stipes varies from a fifth to a third of the entire length of the frond; it is of a dark purple colour, and rather scaly at the base : in some specimens, but these are generally young, the entire plant is hirsute, in others perfectly gla- brous. The seedling plants put on a va- riety of forms ; a few of them are sho^vn in the margin. The veins proceed di- rectly from the rachis, and each has four or five branches : to the outside branches of each vein, or system of veins, is at- tached a long line of capsules, covered by a white membranous involucre of the same form : owing to this disposition of the capsules on the outer branch of each sj^stem of veins, the masses are invariably in pairs; the two involucres at first meet, and appear as one; a day or two later a line appears between them, showing that they are divided ; the line gradually be- comes more apparent as the capsules in- crease in size ; at last, the two involucres are pushed back from each other, and finally disappear. The veins and attach- ment of the capsules are shown on the upper side of the figure at page 275 ; the involucres and clusters of capsules on the lower side : the earliest stage of the dou- ble line and its involucre is shown to the left hand, and each successive figure towards the right shows a gradual advance to maturity. I have taken great pains to make myself understood as to the distinctive character of this genus, not merely for the sake of mj' own work, but because it appears \ I. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability -
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1854
