one sound, two letters
How many l's does selaginella have?
Two, at the end.
one sound, two letters
A doubled consonant in English marks the vowel in front of it as short, and only one of the two letters is ever pronounced, so the ear has nothing to count. The pair is here because -ella is a whole Latin suffix arriving intact. It makes a diminutive, a smaller version of the thing named, and it turns up in the same shape all over the language: novella, umbrella, mozzarella. Selaginella is the small selago.
The class
A doubled letter said once, so the ear counts one and the page needs two.
Same name
Other spellings recorded for selaginella
The name