Part 23

New Brunswick to Florida, in rocky woods. One to two and a half feet high, with very chaffy stalks.

Fronds.--Lance-shaped, once-pinnate, fertile fronds contracted toward the summit; pinnæ narrowly lance-shaped, half halberd-shaped at the slightly stalked base, bristly-toothed, the upper ones on the fertile fronds contracted and smaller; fruit-dots round, close, confluent with age, nearly covering the under surface of the fertile pinnæ; indusium orbicular, fixed by the depressed centre.

Of our evergreen ferns this is the best fitted to serve as a decoration in winter. No other fern has such deep-green, highly polished fronds. They need only a mixture of red berries to become a close rival to the holly at Christmas-time.

Wrapped in a garment of brown scales, the young fronds of the Christmas Fern are sent into the world early in the spring. When we go to the woods in April to look for arbutus, or to listen to the first songs of the robin and the bluebird, we notice that last year's fronds are still fresh and green. Low down among them, curled up like tawny caterpillars, are the young fronds. The arbutus will have made way for pink and blue and white hepaticas, for starry bloodroot, and for tremulous anemones; thrushes and orioles will have joined the robins and the bluebirds before these new-comers present much of an appearance. When the tender, delicately green fronds are first unrolled they contrast strongly with their polished, dark-green, leathery companions.

In this plant the difference is quite conspicuous between the fertile and the sterile fronds. The sterile ones are shorter and apparently broader, while the fertile are tall, slender, and noticeably contracted by the abundantly fruiting pinnæ near the apex.

18. NARROW-LEAVED SPLEENWORT

Asplenium angustifolium

Canada to Kentucky, in moist woods. Two to four feet high.

Sterile fronds.--Thin, smooth, lance-shaped, perishable, once-pinnate.

Fertile fronds.--Taller, narrower, longer-stalked; pinnæ more narrowly lance-shaped than on sterile fronds; fruit-dots linear, a row on each side the midvein; indusium slightly convex.

If we make an expedition to the woods early in July we may, perhaps, find some plants of the Narrow-leaved Spleenwort. At this season they are specially attractive, with smooth, delicate, pale-green fronds, so recently unfolded as to be full of little undulations, which they lose more or less at maturity, and which are as indicative of youth as the curves and dimples of a baby.

NARROW-LEAVED SPLEENWORT

a Magnified pinna of fertile frond]

Late in August the plant has reached a stately height, perhaps of three or four feet. The fronds are still smooth and delicate to a degree unusual even in ferns. But they wear a deeper green, and their texture seems a trifle more substantial. Occasionally, though rarely in the deeper woods, we find a frond which is conspicuously longer-stalked, taller, narrower than the others, with pinnæ more distant and more contracted. A glance at its lower surface discovers double rows of brown, linear fruit-dots.

Though one of the largest of its tribe, the Narrow-leaved Spleenwort suggests greater fragility, a keener sensitiveness to uncongenial conditions, than any other of our native ferns. A storm which leaves the other inhabitants of the forest almost untouched beats down its fronds, tender and perishable even in maturity.

This very fragility, accompanied as it is with beauty of form and color, in the midst of the somewhat coarse and hardy growth of the August woods, lends the plant a peculiar charm.

I find it growing beneath great basswoods, lichen-spotted beeches, and sugar maples with trunks branchless for fifty feet, soaring like huge shipmasts into the blue above.

Almost the only flowers in its neighborhood, for in midsummer wood-flowers are rare, are the tiny pink blossoms of the herb Robert, that invincible little plant which never wearies in well-doing, but persists in flowering from June till October, the violet-blue heads of the almost equally untiring self-heal and the yellow pitchers of the pale touch-me-not or jewel-weed. This plant, a close relative of the more southern and better known spotted touch-me-not, grows in great patches almost in the heart of the woods. The lack of flowers is somewhat atoned for by the coral clusters of the red baneberry and the black-spotted, china-like fruit of the white baneberry.

But ferns chiefly abound in these woods. Everywhere I notice the thin, spreading frond and withered fruit-cluster of the Rattlesnake Fern, in my experience the most ubiquitous member of the Botrychium group. More or less frequent are graceful crowns of the Spinulose Shield Fern, slender shining fronds of Christmas Fern, dull-green groups of Silvery Spleenwort and stately plumes of Goldie's Fern. As we draw near the wood's border, where the yellow sunlit fields of grain shine between the tall maple shafts, we push aside umbrella-like Brakes. At the very limits of the woods, close against the rails, grows the sweet-scented Dicksonia.

19. NET-VEINED CHAIN FERN

Woodwardia angustifolia

Swampy places from Maine to Florida, in wet woods near the coast.

Sterile fronds.--Twelve to eighteen inches high, pinnatifid with minutely toothed divisions united by a broad wing.

Fertile fronds.--Taller than the sterile, once-pinnate; pinnæ much contracted; fruit-dots in a single row each side of the secondary midribs; indusium fixed by its outer margin, opening on the side next the midrib.

The Woodwardias are associated in my mind with sea-air, pine-trees, and the flat, sandy country near Buzzard's Bay, Mass. Both species were met with in one walk not far from the shore.

A little stream, scarcely more than a ditch, divided an open, sunny meadow from a bit of evergreen wood, and on the steep banks of this runlet grew the bright fronds of Woodwardia angustifolia, giving at first glance somewhat the impression of Onoclea sensibilis. The fronds of both are described as pinnatifid, and in this Woodwardia we find the divisions minutely toothed (a), giving them a rough outline which is wanting in Onoclea sensibilis. These are the sterile fronds. Among them and taller than they are the fertile fronds with very narrow divisions, covered on the lower side with the chains of fruit-dots (b).

NET-VEINED CHAIN FERN]

It is a handsome fern and very satisfactory to the novice in fern hunting, because, taking fertile and sterile fronds together, it cannot be confused with any other species.