Städel Museum, museum of art located in Frankfurt am Main, Ger. It was founded in 1816 by a bequest from the banker Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816), who donated his fortune and his art collection to found the institution as an art museum and art school. The institute opened its art collection

Städel Museum, museum of art located in Frankfurt am Main, Ger. It was founded in 1816 by a bequest from the banker Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816), who donated his fortune and his art collection to found the institution as an art museum and art school. The institute opened its art collection

Städel Museum, museum of art located in Frankfurt am Main, Ger. It was founded in 1816 by a bequest from the banker Johann Friedrich Städel (1728–1816), who donated his fortune and his art collection to found the institution as an art museum and art school. The institute opened its art collection

stadtholder, provincial executive officer in the Low Countries, or Netherlands, from the 15th through the 18th century. The office acquired extensive powers in the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Dutch Republic). Introduced by the ruling Burgundian dukes in the 15th century and continued

Netherlands: The first stadtholderless period: Fate thus intervened to give Holland’s leaders, now intensely distrustful of Orangist influence, a chance to take over the country from the leaderless party of their antagonists. They governed the country for a little more than two decades, during what is known as…

stadtholder, provincial executive officer in the Low Countries, or Netherlands, from the 15th through the 18th century. The office acquired extensive powers in the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Dutch Republic). Introduced by the ruling Burgundian dukes in the 15th century and continued

Western architecture: Flanders and Holland: …Flemish Renaissance style was the Stadhuis, or Town Hall (1561–65), at Antwerp, designed by Loys du Foys and Nicolo Scarini and executed by Cornelis II Floris (originally de Vriendt [1514–75]). It was decided to replace Antwerp’s small medieval town hall with a large structure, 300 feet (90 metres) long, in…

stadium: …Greek unit of measurement, the stade, the distance covered in the original Greek footraces (about 600 feet [180 metres]). The course for the footrace in the ancient Olympic Games at Olympia was exactly a stade in length, and the word for the unit of measurement became transferred first to the…

Søren Kierkegaard: A life of collisions: …Stadier paa livets vei (1845; Stages on Life’s Way), and Afsluttende uvidenskabelig efterskrift (1846; Concluding Unscientific Postscript). Even after acknowledging that he had written these works, however, Kierkegaard insisted that they continue to be attributed to their pseudonymous authors. The pseudonyms are best understood by analogy with characters in a…

Florence: Cultural life: …renamed “Artemio Franchi,” or simply Franchi Stadium.

Johann Philipp, count von Stadion was a statesman, foreign minister, and diplomat who served the Habsburg empire during the Napoleonic Wars. After service in the imperial Privy Council (1783–87), Stadion was dispatched to the Austrian embassy in Stockholm. In 1790 he was sent to London, where he

stadium, enclosure that combines broad space for athletic games and other exhibitions with large seating capacity for spectators. The name derives from the Greek unit of measurement, the stade, the distance covered in the original Greek footraces (about 600 feet [180 metres]). The course for the

stadium: …Greek unit of measurement, the stade, the distance covered in the original Greek footraces (about 600 feet [180 metres]). The course for the footrace in the ancient Olympic Games at Olympia was exactly a stade in length, and the word for the unit of measurement became transferred first to the…

Red Hot Chili Peppers: …the Way (2002), and Grammy-winning Stadium Arcadium (2006). The band went on hiatus in early 2008, and the following year Frusciante announced that he had left the group to pursue a solo career. He was replaced on lead guitar by Josh Klinghoffer, who had previously played with the group on…

Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K 581: …and fellow Freemason virtuoso clarinetist Anton Stadler, but it found an unexpectedly wide audience when it was featured in the final episode (1983) of the television series M*A*S*H.

Gamla Stan: It consists of Stads Island, Helgeands Island, and Riddar Island. Most of the buildings in this area date from the 16th and 17th centuries and are legally protected from renovation. Stads Island contains the Royal Palace; Storkyrkan, also called the Cathedral, or Church, of St. Nicolas; the German…

Berlin: The city layout: …Berlin, rises the 39-story hotel Stadt Berlin, one of the city’s tallest buildings.

Robert Faesi: …important works, the epic saga Die Stadt der Väter, Die Stadt der Freiheit, Die Stadt des Friedens, 3 vol. (1941–52; “The City of the Fathers,” “The City of Freedom,” “The City of Peace”), deal with Zürich life during the 18th century, including the period of the French Revolution. In 1949…

Berlin: Transportation: …the Stadt- or Schnellbahn (S-Bahn), a largely elevated and partly underground railway system, began in 1871, and building of the subway, or Untergrundbahn (U-Bahn), was initiated in 1897. By World War II the city had one of the finest rapid transit systems in Europe. After the erection of the…

Karl, Reichsfreiherr vom und zum Stein: Achievements as minister and prime minister.: Stein’s Municipal Ordinance (Städteordnung) of Nov. 19, 1808, was of lasting importance. It introduced self-government for the urban communes, created the distinction between the salaried executive officials (mayor and magistrate) and the town councils, and so enabled the towns to deal with their local affairs largely…

stadtholder, provincial executive officer in the Low Countries, or Netherlands, from the 15th through the 18th century. The office acquired extensive powers in the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Dutch Republic). Introduced by the ruling Burgundian dukes in the 15th century and continued

Netherlands: The first stadtholderless period: Fate thus intervened to give Holland’s leaders, now intensely distrustful of Orangist influence, a chance to take over the country from the leaderless party of their antagonists. They governed the country for a little more than two decades, during what is known as…

wind instrument: In western Europe: Stadtpfeifer (“town pipers”), as these musicians were known in Germany, played for ceremonies, for weddings, and sometimes with singers in performances of elaborately scored sacred polyphony (i.e., music with multiple melodic lines). In France during the reign of Louis XIV, the Grande Écurie (an ensemble…

Germaine de Staël was a French-Swiss woman of letters, political propagandist, and conversationalist, who epitomized the European culture of her time, bridging the history of ideas from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. She also gained fame by maintaining a salon for leading intellectuals. Her writings

Germaine de Staël was a French-Swiss woman of letters, political propagandist, and conversationalist, who epitomized the European culture of her time, bridging the history of ideas from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. She also gained fame by maintaining a salon for leading intellectuals. Her writings

staff, in the notation of Western music, five parallel horizontal lines that, with a clef, indicate the pitch of musical notes. The invention of the staff is traditionally ascribed to Guido d’Arezzo in about the year 1000, although there are earlier manuscripts in which neumes (signs from which

gauging station: …measuring devices used are a staff gauge, which is a graduated scale anchored in the water and read by observing the level of the water surface in contact with it; and a recording gauge, which continuously monitors water level, sensed by a probe or a float and recorded by a…

pre-Columbian civilizations: Chavín monuments and temples: The stone shows the Staff God, a standing semihuman figure having claws, a feline face with crossed fangs, and a staff in each hand. Above his head, occupying two-thirds of the stone, is a towering, pillarlike structure fringed with snakes and emerging from a double-fanged face, which Rowe interpreted…

Guido d’Arezzo: …apparently developed his principles of staff notation there. He left Pomposa in about 1025 because his fellow monks resisted his musical innovations, and he was appointed by Theobald, bishop of Arezzo, as a teacher in the cathedral school and commissioned to write the Micrologus de disciplina artis musicae. The bishop…

military unit: …smallest unit to have a staff of officers (in charge of personnel, operations, intelligence, and logistics) to assist the commander. Several battalions form a brigade, which has 2,000 to 8,000 troops and is commanded by a brigadier general or a colonel. (The term regiment

bittersweet: …tree family (Celastraceae), includes the American bittersweet, or staff vine (C. scandens), and the Oriental bittersweet (C. orbiculatus), woody vines grown as ornamentals. The flowers, in whitish clusters, are followed by yellow to orange capsules, which split to reveal yellow to crimson arils enclosing the seeds. Oriental bittersweet is a…

Leopold Staff was an influential poet and translator associated with the Young Poland movement at the end of the 19th century. After completing his education in Lwów, Staff moved to Kraków, which in the 1890s was the centre of Polish literary life. There he came into close contact with

Celastraceae, the staff-tree family, in the order Celastrales, comprising about 55 genera of woody vines, shrubs, and trees, native in tropical and temperate zones but best known for ornamental forms of the genera Euonymus and Celastrus (bittersweet). Fruit of the family is often colourful. Leaves

Staffa, uninhabited Atlantic island of the Inner Hebrides, Scotland, situated 6 miles (10 km) off the island of Mull and 33 miles west of Oban. Columns of basalt surmount a basement of tufa and form a rugged coast with numerous caves, among them Clamshell Cave in the southeast and Fingal’s Cave, a

American Staffordshire Terrier, breed of dog, originally called Staffordshire Terrier when registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC) in 1936, that was developed in the United States and based on the smaller British Staffordshire Bull Terrier. The ancestry of the American Staffordshire Terrier

human resources management: …managerial policies and programs; (3) staffing, or manning—analyzing jobs, developing job descriptions and specifications, appraising and maintaining an inventory of available capabilities, recruiting, selecting, placing, transferring, demoting, promoting, and thus assuring qualified manpower when and where it is needed; (4) training and development—assisting team members in their continuing personal growth,…

Stafford: Stafford, town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Staffordshire, west-central England, lying along the River Sow. It includes a large rural agricultural area and the towns of Stone and Stafford.

Stafford, town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Staffordshire, west-central England, lying along the River Sow. It includes a large rural agricultural area and the towns of Stone and Stafford. Founded by Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, the town of Stafford

Defense Production Act: …preparedness activities” (defined by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act [1988] as “all those activities and measures designed or undertaken to prepare for or minimize the effects of a hazard upon the civilian population”).

Defense Production Act: …preparedness activities” (defined by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act [1988] as “all those activities and measures designed or undertaken to prepare for or minimize the effects of a hazard upon the civilian population”).

Edward Stafford, 3rd duke of Buckingham was the eldest son of Henry Stafford, the 2nd duke, succeeding to the title in 1485, after the attainder had been removed, two years after the execution of his father. On the accession of Henry VIII Buckingham began to play an important role in political

Henry Stafford, 2nd duke of Buckingham was a leading supporter, and later opponent, of King Richard III. He was a Lancastrian descendant of King Edward III, and a number of his forebears had been killed fighting the Yorkists in the Wars of the Roses (1455–85). In 1460 he succeeded his grandfather

Humphrey Stafford, 1st duke of Buckingham was a Lancastrian prominent in the Hundred Years’ War in France and the Wars of the Roses in England. He became 6th earl of Stafford when only a year old, his father having died in battle. He was knighted by Henry V in 1421 and then, under Henry VI, served

Jean Stafford was an American short-story writer and novelist noted for her disaffected female characters, who often must confront restrictive societal conventions and institutions as they come of age. After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder (B.A., 1936; M.A., 1936), Stafford

Detroit Lions: Matthew Stafford and Calvin Johnson: …NFL draft, Detroit drafted quarterback Matt Stafford, who became the hub of a potent passing attack that also featured All-Pro wide receiver Calvin Johnson. In 2011 the Lions qualified for their first playoff appearance in 12 years. The team followed that achievement with two consecutive losing seasons that led to…

Sir Edward William Stafford was a landowner and statesman who served three times as prime minister of New Zealand (1856–61, 1865–69, 1872). The son of a landed Irish family, Stafford began farming sheep in New Zealand (1843), was elected superintendent of Nelson province (1853) and representative

Thomas Stafford was an American astronaut who flew two Gemini rendezvous missions (1965–66) and commanded the Apollo 10 mission (1969)—the final test of Apollo systems before the first crewed landing on the Moon—as well as the Apollo spacecraft that docked with a Soviet Soyuz craft in space in

Thomas Stafford was an American astronaut who flew two Gemini rendezvous missions (1965–66) and commanded the Apollo 10 mission (1969)—the final test of Apollo systems before the first crewed landing on the Moon—as well as the Apollo spacecraft that docked with a Soviet Soyuz craft in space in

William Stafford was an American poet whose work explores man’s relationship with nature. He formed the habit of rising early to write every day, often musing on the minutia of life. Stafford attended the University of Kansas (B.A., 1937; M.A., 1945) and the State University of Iowa, where he

Staffordshire, administrative, geographic, and historic county in the Midlands of west-central England. It extends north from the West Midlands metropolitan county (centred on Birmingham) and is bordered by Shropshire to the west, Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire to the northeast, Warwickshire

Staffordshire Bull Terrier, breed of terrier developed in 19th-century England for fighting other dogs in pits. The breed was created by crossing the Bulldog, then a longer-legged and more agile animal, with a terrier, possibly the Fox Terrier or, more likely, one of the now extinct breeds known as

Staffordshire figure, type of pottery figurine made in Staffordshire, England, from the 18th century. The earliest figures, made from about 1740, are naive but effective renderings of the human body in salt-glazed stoneware—e.g., the pew groups, or figures seated on a high-backed settle. Later some

Staffordshire Moorlands, district, administrative and historic county of Staffordshire, central England. It is situated directly east of the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Leek is the administrative centre. Staffordshire Moorlands includes part of Peak District National Park in the northeast, where it is

American Staffordshire Terrier, breed of dog, originally called Staffordshire Terrier when registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC) in 1936, that was developed in the United States and based on the smaller British Staffordshire Bull Terrier. The ancestry of the American Staffordshire Terrier

Staffordshire ware, lead-glazed earthenware and unglazed or salt-glazed stoneware made in Staffordshire, England, from the 17th century onward. Abundance of local clays and coal gave rise to a concentration of pottery factories that made Staffordshire one of the foremost pottery centres in Europe.

American Staffordshire Terrier, breed of dog, originally called Staffordshire Terrier when registered with the American Kennel Club (AKC) in 1936, that was developed in the United States and based on the smaller British Staffordshire Bull Terrier. The ancestry of the American Staffordshire Terrier

George Wesley Bellows: …paintings of prizefights, such as Stag at Sharkey’s and Both Members of This Club (both 1909), date from this period as well; they remain among his most famous works.

stag beetle, (family Lucanidae), any of some 900 species of beetles (insect order Coleoptera) in which the mandibles (jaws) are greatly developed in the male and resemble the antlers of a stag. In many species the elaborately branched and toothed mandibles may be as long as the beetle itself. If

Hans Werner Henze: The opera König Hirsch (1956; The Stag King) marked the beginning of a second period, in which Henze shed serialism (ordered series of notes, rhythms, etc.), revealing a freely inventive and eclectic style. This work showed Henze at maturity, though he was already well established in 1952, when he won…

club moss: Major genera and species: …club moss, also known as running pine or stag’s horn moss (Lycopodium clavatum), has creeping stems up to 3 metres (about 10 feet) long and has 10-cm- (about 4-inch-) high ascending branches. The scalelike green leaves are set closely together. Running pine is native to open dry woods and rocky…

Sharon Olds: For Stag’s Leap (2012), which chronicles the 1997 dissolution of her marriage, she was awarded both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2016 Olds received the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award.

geochronology: Stages and zones: The extensive review of the marine invertebrate fauna of the Paris Basin by Deshayes and Lyell not only made possible the formalization of the term Tertiary but also had a more far-reaching effect. The thousands of marine invertebrate fossils studied by Deshayes…

launch vehicle: Stages: A basic approach to launch vehicle design, first suggested by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, is to divide the vehicle into “stages.” The first stage is the heaviest part of the vehicle and has the largest rocket engines, the largest fuel and oxidizer tanks, and the highest…

Central Asian arts: Shamanic ritual: …Central Asia, there were no centres for the performing arts in the usual sense of the word. Each shaman performed his dramatic arts at his own residence or environs as the occasion demanded. He had his own ritual costumes and paraphernalia, which displayed regional variations, particularly in ornamentation. The representation…

cervical cancer: Diagnosis and prognosis: …cancer has been diagnosed, its stage is then determined. The stage is an indicator of how far the cancer has progressed. Stage 0 cervical cancer is also called carcinoma in situ and is confined to the epithelial cells that line the cervix. Stage I cancers have spread into the connective…

Billy Crudup: Roles from the early 2000s and split from Mary-Louise Parker: …his costar in the film Stage Beauty (2004). The new relationship became the subject of unwelcome tabloid attention, but Crudup never commented on the situation. Indeed, the actor has a reputation for being guarded about his personal life. He told The New York Times in 2023, “I figured the more…

stagecraft: Costume design: Theatrical costumes were an innovation of the Greek poet Thespis in the 6th century bce, and theatrical costumes were long called “the robes of Thespis.” Athenians spent lavishly on the production and costumes at annual drama contests. Each poet was…

Gregory La Cava: Heyday: …had even greater success with Stage Door (1937), an acclaimed adaptation of the Edna Ferber–George S. Kaufman play about a boardinghouse for aspiring actresses. The comedy boasted a stellar cast—including Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, and Adolphe Menjou—and a number of memorable scenes, many of which were the

Sol Lesser: …classics as Oliver Twist (1922), Stage Door Canteen (1943), and his Academy Award-winning documentary, Kon-Tiki (1951). His profits from Stage Door Canteen were so great that Lesser donated $51.5 million to the American Theatre Wing. He retired at age 36 to embark on a two-year world cruise but became bored…

the Band: …of rock was reflected in Stage Fright (1970), an album full of foreboding and depression. Ironically, the record preceded the Band’s most intensive period of touring, during which they became the formidable live unit of the magnificent Rock of Ages (1972).

Alfred Hitchcock: The Hollywood years: Rebecca to Dial M for Murder: …film there, the comic thriller Stage Fright (1950), was one of his lighter works. Marlene Dietrich played Charlotte Inwood, an actress who may have murdered her husband. Her young lover Jonathan Cooper (Richard Todd) is accused of the crime, and drama student Eve Gill (Jane Wyman) takes a job with…

Lee Simonson: His published works include The Stage Is Set (1932), an important essay on the theater; an autobiography, Part of a Lifetime (1943); and The Art of Scenic Design (1950).

stagecraft: Stage lighting: The classic Greek theatron (literally, “a place of seeing”) was built in the open air, usually on a hillside, and placed so that the afternoon sunlight came from behind the audience and flooded the performing area with light. The larger Roman…

stage machinery, devices designed for the production of theatrical effects, such as rapid scene changes, lighting, sound effects, and illusions of the supernatural or magical. Theatrical machinery has been in use since at least the 5th century bc, when the Greeks developed deus ex machina (q.v.),

magic, theatrical representation of the defiance of natural law. Legerdemain, meaning “light, or nimble, of hand,” and juggling, meaning “the performance of tricks,” were the terms initially used to designate exhibitions of deception. The words magic and conjuring had no theatrical significance

Stage Manager, fictional character who acts as the narrator of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town (1938). The Stage Manager both participates in and comments on the action of the

theatre: The theatrical hierarchy: …the director’s general direction, a stage manager, possibly with several assistants, looks after the organization of rehearsal and the technical elements of the performance—light and curtain cues, properties, sound effects, and so on.

cycling: Competition: …for amateurs; and multiday, or stage, races, basically a series of classic races run on successive days. The winner of a stage race is the rider with lowest aggregate time for all stages. Also popular, especially in Britain and the United States, are criterium races, which are run over a…

Western theatre: The independent theatre: …prepared the way for the Stage Society, founded in 1899. For the next 40 years the society arranged private Sunday performances of experimental plays at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

Sidney Lumet: Early work: Stage Struck (1958) tried to capitalize on Lumet’s theatrical experience, but that remake of the 1933 play Morning Glory was largely ignored, owing in part to the miscasting of Susan Strasberg as an aspiring actress who moves to New York City in the hopes of…

stage wagon, early, four-wheeled, American vehicle, used to carry both passengers and cargo. It was a precursor of the stagecoach. The first stage wagons had no springs, backless wooden benches, sides of wood, and canvas tops. Later improvements were roll-up leather curtains, solid flat tops,

river: Peak discharge and flooding: Rapid variations of water-surface level in river channels through time, in combination with the occurrence from time to time of overbank flow in flat-bottomed valleys, have promoted intensive study of the discharge relationships and the probability characteristics of peak flow. Stage (depth…

Gordon Douglas: Later films: …1966 remake of John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), with Ann-Margret and Bing Crosby, paled in comparison to the original, and Way…Way Out (1966) was a charmless Jerry Lewis vehicle. Douglas later made three hard-boiled Sinatra films: Tony Rome (1967) and its sequel Lady in Cement (1968) and (arguably the best of…

Stagecoach, American western film, released in 1939, that is a classic of the genre, widely considered to be the first “adult” western. One of director John Ford’s defining movies, it also elevated John Wayne to stardom. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.) The film opens

stagecoach, any public coach regularly travelling a fixed route between two or more stations (stages). Used in London at least by 1640, and about 20 years later in Paris, stagecoaches reached their greatest importance in England and the United States in the 19th century, where the new macadam roads

Mary Fields was an American pioneer who was the first African American woman to become a U.S. postal service star (contract) route mail carrier. Fields was born into slavery. Little is known of her early life or what she did in the years immediately following the end of the Civil War and her

stagecraft, the technical aspects of theatrical production, which include scenic design, stage machinery, lighting, sound, costume design, and makeup. In comparison with the history of Western theatre, the history of scenic design is short. Whereas the golden age of Greek theatre occurred more than

logistics: Staged resupply: Long before mechanization relegated local supply to a minor role in logistics, growing supply requirements were making armies more dependent on supply from bases. The Etappen system of the Prussian army in 1866 resembled the Napoleonic train service of 1807. Behind each army…

staged rocket, vehicle driven by several rocket systems mounted in vertical sequence. The lowest, or first stage, ignites and then lifts the vehicle at increasing velocity until exhaustion of its propellants. At that point the first stage drops off, lightening the vehicle, and the second stage

bowerbird: The stagemaker, or tooth-billed catbird (Scenopoeetes dentirostris), of forests of northeastern Australia, arranges leaves silvery-side up (withered ones are carried aside) to form a “circus ring.”

development theory: Theories of modernization and growth: His 1960 book, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, elaborated a linear-stages-of-growth model that defined development as a sequence of stages through which all societies must pass. This conception of the nature and process of development became the basic blueprint for modernization theory.

Søren Kierkegaard: A life of collisions: …Stadier paa livets vei (1845; Stages on Life’s Way), and Afsluttende uvidenskabelig efterskrift (1846; Concluding Unscientific Postscript). Even after acknowledging that he had written these works, however, Kierkegaard insisted that they continue to be attributed to their pseudonymous authors. The pseudonyms are best understood by analogy with characters in a…

political economy: National and comparative political economy: …however, many Western countries experienced “stagflation,” or simultaneous high unemployment and inflation, a phenomenon that contradicted Keynes’s view. The result was a revival of classical liberalism, also known as “neoliberalism,” which became the cornerstone of economic policy in the United States under President Ronald Reagan (1981–89) and in the United…

Amos Alonzo Stagg was an American football coach who had the longest coaching career—71 years—in the history of the sport. In 1943, at the age of 81, he was named college coach of the year, and he remained active in coaching until the age of 98. He is the only person selected for the College

James Martin Stagg was a British meteorologist who, as the chief weather forecaster to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, gave crucial advice on weather conditions for the Normandy Invasion during World War II. Stagg, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, became an assistant in Britain’s

Lloyd Price: Price renamed it “Stagger Lee” (1958), turned the song’s cautionary theme on its head with an uproarious arrangement, and wrote a delicate introduction reminiscent of haiku: “The night was clear  /  The moon was yellow  /  And the leaves…came…tumbling  /  Down.” Price turned out hits throughout the 1960s…

hydrocarbon: Three-dimensional structures: …the least stable, and the staggered conformation is the most stable. The eclipsed conformation is said to suffer torsional strain because of repulsive forces between electron pairs in the C―H bonds of adjacent carbons. These repulsive forces are minimized in the staggered conformation since all C―H bonds are as far…

staghead, progressive slow death of tree branches from the top down. See

staghorn fern, (genus Platycerium), member of the genus Platycerium (family Polypodiaceae), which is bizarre in appearance and frequently displayed in conservatories and other collections. Platycerium ( 17 species of Africa, Asia, and South America) is epiphytic—i.e., the plants grow upon other

fern: Annotated classification: …lacking pith and leaf gaps); Gleichenia, Dicranopteris, and 4 other genera with about 125 species, distributed in the tropics. Family Dipteridaceae (umbrella ferns) Plants in soil; rhizomes long-creeping, hairy; leaf blades usually palmately divided into 2 or more lobes, the veins of at