Home
Rhizomes slender, long creeping; scales light brown, lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate. Fronds scattered along rhizomes; stipe brownish straw-colored, glabrous, stipe of sterile frond 3-8 cm, that of fertile frond 6-12 cm. Sterile fronds: lamina yellowish green, ovate or ovate-oblong, 3-6 × 1.5-3 cm, 1-or 2-pinnate, herbaceous to membranous, glabrous on both surfaces, apex obtuse; hydathodes poorly developed or absent. Fertile fronds: lamina broadly lanceolate or oblong, 4-8 × 1.8-4 cm, 2-pinnate. Sterile pinnae 3 or 4 pairs, subrounded, margins entire or slightly undulate, apex obtuse. Fertile pinnae 4 or 5 pairs, shortly stalked or subsessile, basal pair largest, 1-pinnate. Pinnules 1 or 2 pairs, anadromous, broadly lanceolate, shortly stalked or sessile, base cuneate, apex acute or obtuse. Sori borne at vein tips, discrete, often confluent at maturity. False indusia pale green, membranous, margins somewhat irregular, not reaching to main vein.
Rhizomes slender, soft, creeping, pilose and scaly, the pale brown, hyaline-reticulate scales not over 2 × 0.5 mm; lvs scattered, thin and soft, deciduous; petioles castaneous or dark purple basally, usually greenish or stramineous distally, 2.5–15 cm, the fertile ones commonly longer than the sterile; sterile blades 3–8 × 2–5 cm, 2–3 times pinnate with confluent, flabellate to ovate, distally toothed pinnules 5–15 × 3–10 mm; fertile blades with longer and narrower, sometimes linear pinnules to 2 cm × 3(–5) mm, the rather narrowly reflexed, evidently hyaline-scarious indusial margin more strongly modified than in C. crispa; 2n=60. Calcareous rocks and moist shady slopes, circumboreal, in Amer. from Nf. to Alas., s. to n. N.J. (formerly), n. Pa., W.Va., Ill., Io., Utah, and Wash.
