Botany:
· Rhizome: densely clothed with brownish scales; with fleshy, egg-shaped tubers.
· Stipe: tufted and glossy or more usually clothed with slender soft, brown paleae, 2.5 to 25 cm long, not jointed to rootstock. (Note: a jointed rootstock, in contrast, breaks off very easily from its point of attachment, leaving a more or less rounded, even-edged depression.)
· Fronds: simply pinnate, smooth, linear lanceolate, 20 to 60 cm long, 2.5 to 5 cm wide.
· Pinnae: numerous, often imbrocated at the widened bases, 8 mm wide, the apex more or less bluntish, the base heart-shaped, jointed to rachis, base rounded on the lower side and auricled on the upper side, toothed to subentire.
· Sori: large, round, submedial, nearer the edge than the midrib.
· Indusium: usually reniform, broad, opening towards the apices of the pinnae.

Distribution
A common terrestial fern used locally in gardens as a hedge plant. Also grows wild in forests and wastelands. From sea-level to above 7000 feet altitudes.

Parts utilized
· Tubers.
· Collect the fleshy underground tubers, remove the epidermal scales, wash, boil, and sun-dry.

Properties
Faintly sweet, mildly tart.
Cooling, stomachic, febrifuge, antitussive, tonic.

Folkloric uses
· For fever due to cold, chronic coughing, enteritis-diarrhea, infantile convulsions: use 9 to 15 gms of the prepared drug in decoction.

Availability
Wild-crafted.
Common garden hedge plant.

Note: Resembles the common Boston Fern (Nephrolepsis exaltata L.), an ornamental used extensively in flower wreath-making, but the fronds of N. cordifolia is narrower. |