Hab.—Crevices of damp and shaded calcareous rocks, especially in deep
glens; Labrador, Butler, to British Columbia, and southward to Iowa,
Parry, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Also in Colorado, near Breckinridge
City, Brandegee. Siberia, Tibet and the Himalayas. It is found in
Sunderland, Massachusetts; at Trenton Falls, Chittenango Falls, and
other deep glens in Central New York; in Lycoming and Sullivan
Counties, Pennsylvania, and in other similar places in Vermont,
Michigan, etc., but is by no means a common plant.
Description:—This is the most delicate of all the _Pellæas_, and has
fronds a good deal like those of _Cryptogramme acrostichoides_, but
tenderer, and with sub-marginal fructification. The root-stock is very
slender, scarcely more than half a line in thickness, and sometimes two
or three inches long. It is so hidden in the crevices of the rocks that
it is seldom secured by collectors. The scales are minute, appressed to
the root-stock, and almost filmy in their delicacy.
The stalks are scattered along the root-stock, and are generally about
five or six inches long, those of the fertile fronds longer, stouter and
of a darker color than the others. They are smooth and somewhat polished,
but lighter in color and far more tender in consistency than in most of
our other species of this genus.
The fertile and the sterile fronds are unlike, though both are very
delicately membranaceous, and pinnate with once or twice pinnatifid
pinnæ. The rachis is not winged in its lower half, except in very small
fronds, but above the middle it is narrowly winged, as are also its
divisions. The lowest one or two pairs of pinnæ are twice pinnatifid in
the largest specimens, but more commonly but once pinnatifid. In the
sterile fronds the segments of the pinnæ are very plainly adnate to the
secondary midrib, and are roundish or roundish-obovate in shape. They are
from three to six lines long and about two-thirds as broad. Their margin
is more or less lobed and crenately toothed. In the fertile fronds the
segments are more distinct, longer and narrower, measuring often six to
ten lines in length and one or two in width. The terminal pinna of the
frond and the terminal segments of the pinnæ are considerably longer than
the others. The veins are conspicuous, and distant, much more so than in
our other species of _Pellæa_. They fork once about midway between the
midvein and the margin, and sometimes, especially in fertile fronds, a
second time just within the margin.
The involucre is continuous, broad, and even more delicate than the frond
itself. The sporangia are comparatively scanty, and are fully covered by
the involucre. The spores are spheroid-tetrahedral and obscurely
trivittate.
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