Part 30

If Mr. Burr's kindness in sending me some fine pressed specimens, and the illustrations I had seen in various books, had not already made me familiar with the general look of the plant, the long, undivided, tongue-like fronds, so different from one's preconceived notion of a fern, would have been a great surprise. Even now, although I have visited many times its hidden retreats, and have noted with delight every detail of its glossy, vigorous growth, it seems to me always as rare and unusual as it did the first day I found it.

At Chittenango Falls the Hart's Tongue grows a few yards from the base of bold, overhanging limestone cliffs, the tops of which are fringed by pendent roots of the red cedar. Nearly always it is caught beneath moss-grown fragments of the fallen limestone, the bright-green, undulating, glossy leaves either standing almost erect (curving outward slightly above) or else falling over toward the slope of the land so as to present a nearly prostrate appearance. At times these fronds are very numerous, as many as fifty to a plant, forming great clumps of foliage. Again we find a plant with only half a dozen or even fewer green fronds. At maturity the linear, bright-brown fruit-dots, a row on either side the midrib, are conspicuous on the lower surfaces of the fronds.

This haunt of the Hart's Tongue is shaded by a growth of tall basswoods and maples, of sturdy oaks and hemlocks. The neighboring cliffs are draped with the slender fronds of the Bulblet Bladder Fern. On every side rise the tall crowns of the omnipresent Evergreen Wood Fern. Lower down, close to the rushing stream which we see mistily through the green branches, its roar always in our ears, grow the Walking Leaf and the Maidenhair. The little Polypody climbs over the rocks and perches contentedly on the spreading roots of trees, while a few fragile plants of the Slender Cliff Brake, something of a rarity in these parts, are fastened to the mossy ledges.

The other published northern station of the Hart's Tongue is at Jamesville, some fifteen miles from Chittenango Falls, near a small sheet of water known commonly as Green Pond, christened botanically Scolopendrium Lake. Here also it grows among the talus at the foot of limestone cliffs. The plants which I found in this locality were less luxuriant than those at Chittenango Falls. They grow in more exposed, less shaded spots.

Scolopendrium Lake has become somewhat famous in the world of fern students by reason of Mr. Underwood's claim that in its immediate vicinity, within a radius of fifty rods from the water's edge (the lake being a mere pond), grow twenty-seven different kinds of ferns, while within a circle whose diameter is not over three miles thirty-four species have been found. During this one day we gave to the neighborhood, we could not hope to find so great a number, the result, perhaps, of many days' investigation, and were forced to content ourselves with the twenty-one species we did find. In his list Mr. Underwood marks the Purple Cliff Brake as found but once, so I judge he did not discover the station on the turreted cliffs close by where it grows in extravagant profusion, producing fronds not only much longer and finer than I had seen elsewhere, but superior to those pictured in the illustrated books.

During the same summer, on an expedition to Perryville Falls, which we had planned for the express purpose of finding the Rue Spleenwort and the Purple Cliff Brake, a new station was discovered for the Hart's Tongue. To Miss Murray Ledyard, of Cazenovia, belongs the honor of finding the first plants in this locality. We had been successful in the original object of our journey, and had crossed the stream in order to examine the opposite cliffs. J. and I, curious to study the wet wall of rock close to the sheer white veil of water, which fell more than one hundred feet, finally secured an unsubstantial foothold among graceful tufts of the greenish, lily-like flowers, which ought to receive a more homely and appropriate title than Zygadenus elegans. Having satisfied ourselves that the mossy crevices harbored no plants of the Slender Cliff Brake, now the immediate object of our search, we followed the natural path beneath the overhanging rock and above the sheer descent to the ravine, examining the cliffs as we cautiously picked our way. Miss Ledyard had remained below, and suddenly we heard her give a triumphant shout, followed by the joyful announcement that she had found the Hart's Tongue. The station being previously quite unknown, this was a most interesting discovery. On entering the ravine we had discussed its possibility, but I had fancied that any hope of it would be unfounded, as I supposed the ground had been thoroughly canvassed by the many botanists who had visited the neighborhood.

The plants were still young, but large and vigorous, growing in a partial opening among the basswoods, maples, and beeches, on a steep slope covered with fragments of limestone, some thirty or forty feet from the base of the cliffs. We must have found from twenty to thirty plants within a radius of as many feet.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, the discovery found its way to the columns of the local paper, and on our return to the station, some weeks later our eager expectation of seeing the young plants in the splendor of maturity was crushed by finding that the spot had been ruthlessly invaded and a number of the finest plants had disappeared. Before long it will be necessary for botanists to form a secret society, with vows of silence as to fern localities and some sort of lynch law for the punishment of vandals.

This fern, so rare with us, is a common plant in Europe, its fronds attaining at times a length of two or three feet. In Ireland and the Channel Islands it is especially abundant. In Devonshire, England, it is described as growing "on the tops and at the sides of walls; hanging from old ruins ... dropping down its long, green fronds into the cool and limpid water of roadside wells hewn out of the rock; often exposed to the full blaze of the sun, but always in such cases dwindled down to a tiny size" ("The Fern Paradise").

The Hart's Tongue has been known as the Caterpillar Fern and the Seaweed Fern.

36. VIRGINIA CHAIN FERN

Woodwardia Virginica

Swampy places, often in deep water, from Maine to Florida. Two to more than three feet high.

Fronds.--Once-pinnate; pinnæ pinnatifid, with oblong segments; fruit-dots oblong, in chain-like rows along the midrib both of the pinnæ and of the lobes, confluent when ripe; indusium fixed by its outer margin, opening on the side next the midrib.

Emerging from the shade and silence of a little wood upon the rolling downs where one has glimpses of the blue bay, our attention is attracted by a tall fern beside the path, growing among a tangle of shrubs and vines. It does not grow in symmetrical crowns or tufts like an Osmunda, but its fronds are almost as handsome, the divisions being wider apart and more scattered. Turning over two or three of the rather glossy fronds, we find a rusty-backed, fertile frond, covered on one side with the regular chain-like rows of fruit-dots which make its name of Chain Fern seem very appropriate and descriptive.

UPPER PART OF FROND OF VIRGINIA CHAIN FERN

a Portion of fertile pinna b Tip of fertile pinna]

In the low, damp ground near the coast one may expect to find this fern; its haunts, where the narrow path winds between tall masses of sweet-pepper bush and wet meadows where pogonia and calopogon delight us in July, and the white-fringed orchids may be found in later summer, are among the most beautiful of the many beautiful kinds of country that the fern and flower lover knows, to which his feet stray inevitably in the season of green things, and which are the solace of his "inward eye" when that season is past.

GROUP VI

FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE AND USUALLY SIMILAR, FRUIT-DOTS ROUND

37. NEW YORK FERN

Aspidium Noveboracense (Dryopteris Noveboracensis)

Newfoundland to South Carolina, in woods and open meadows. One to more than two feet high, with stalks shorter than the fronds.

Fronds.--Lance-shaped, tapering both ways from the middle pinnate; pinnæ lance-shaped, the lowest pairs shorter and deflexed, divided into flat, oblong lobes which are not reflexed over the fruit-dots; fruit-dots round, distinct, near the margin; indusium minute.

At times the pale-green fronds of the New York Fern throng to the roadside, which is flanked by a tangled thicket of Osmundas, wild roses, and elder bushes.

Again, they stay quietly at home in the open marsh or in the shadow of the hemlocks and cedars, where they have fragrant pyrola and pipsissewa for company, and where the long, melancholy note of the peewee breaks the silence.

This plant is easily distinguished from the Marsh Fern by the noticeable tapering at both ends of its frond, and by the flat instead of reflexed margins to the lobes of the fertile pinnæ.

NEW YORK FERN