Mr. Emerton’s figure is taken from a living plant, and shows the frond as it appears before it has been flattened in a collector’s portfolio.
ONOCLEA STRUTHIOPTERIS, Hoffmann. Ostrich-Fern.
Onoclea Struthiopteris:—Caudex short, thick, erect, emitting slender subterranean stolons; stalks stout, a few inches to a foot long, chaffy at the base; fronds standing in a vase-like crown, dimorphous; sterile ones one to ten feet high, herbaceo-membranaceous, broadly lanceolate, narrowed from the middle to the base, abruptly short-acuminate, pinnate; pinnæ very many, sessile, the lowest ones sinuate and deflexed, the rest three to eight inches long, five to nine lines wide, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, deeply pinnatifid into numerous close-placed oblong obtuse entire segments provided with a midvein and several simple veinlets on each side; fertile fronds in the middle of the crown or vase, much shorter than the sterile, rigid, contracted, narrowed at the base, pinnate; pinnæ one to two inches long, crowded, obliquely ascending, linear, obtuse, sub-entire or pinnately lobed, the lobes one or two lines long and broad, the margins much recurved, and the whole pinna forming a somewhat articulated pod-like body; veinlets of the fertile segments few, soriferous on the back; receptacle elevated; indusium very delicate, lacerate-toothed, half surrounding the sorus; sporangia at length confluent and filling the fertile pinnæ.
_Onoclea Struthiopteris_, Hoffmann, “Deutschlands Flora, p. 11 (1795).”—Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 111.—Weber & Mohr, Taschenbuch, p. 47, t. iv., f. 3, 4.—Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 97, t. 105.—Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 97, t. xvii., f. 11-15.—Milde, Fil. Eur. et Atlant., p. 154.
_Onoclea nodulosa_, Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 97, t. 104 (Perhaps also of Michaux, but this is still uncertain).
_Onoclea Germanica_, Hooker, Sp. Fil., iv., p. 161.—Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 46.
_Osmunda Struthiopteris_, Linnæus, Sp. Pl., p. 1522.
_Struthiopteris Germanica_, Willdenow, “Enum, p. 1071;” Sp. Pl., v., p. 288.—Link, Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 38.—Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am., ii., p. 262.—Torrey, Fl. New York, ii., p. 486.—Gray, Manual, ed. i., p. 623, etc.—Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ. et Helv., ed. iii., p. 739.—Williamson, Fern-Etchings, t. 44.