Part 6

But it is not easy to convince a friend that he has made a mistake in this regard. You chance to be driving by a bank overgrown with the early meadow rue when he calls your attention to the unusual abundance of Maidenhair in the neighborhood. To his rather indignant surprise you suggest that the plant he saw was not Maidenhair, but the early meadow rue. If he have the least reverence for your botanical attainments he grudgingly admits that possibly it was not the ordinary Maidenhair, but maintains stoutly that it was a more uncommon species which abounds in his especial neighborhood. If truly diplomatic you hold your peace and change the subject, but if possessed by a tormenting love of truth which is always getting you into trouble, you state sadly but firmly that our northeastern States have but one species of Maidenhair, and that it is more than improbable that the favored neighborhood of his home (for it is always an unusually rich locality) offers another. The result of this discussion is that mentally you are pronounced both conceited and pig-headed. For a few weeks the plants in question are passed without comment, but by another summer the rich growth of Maidenhair is again proudly exhibited. Only in one way can you save your reputation and possibly convince your friend. When correcting him, if you glibly remark that _Adiantum pedatum_, our northeastern Maidenhair, is the only species which has been found in this part of the country, that _A. Capillus-Veneris_, the Maidenhair which somewhat resembles the early meadow rue, can hardly be found north of Virginia, while _A. tenerum_ is found only in Florida, and _A. emarginatum_ is confined to the Pacific coast, you will have redeemed yourself, not from the stigma of conceit, far from it, but from that of error. The glib utterance of Latin names is attended with a strange power of silencing your opponent and filling him with a sort of grudging belief in your scientific attainments.

The truth is that the average layman who takes an interest in plants is as sensitive regarding the Maidenhair as he is about his recognition of an orchid. By way of warning what more need be said?

Though the Maidenhair has a wide range and grows abundantly in many localities, it possesses a quality of aloofness which adds to its charm. Even in neighborhoods where it grows profusely, it rarely crowds to the roadside or becomes the companion of your daily walks. Its chosen haunts are dim, moist hollows in the woods or shaded hill-sides sloping to the river. In such retreats you find the feathery fronds tremulous on their black, glistening stalks, and in their neighborhood you find also the very spirit of the woods.

Despite its apparent fragility, the Maidenhair is not difficult to cultivate if provided with sufficient shade and moisture.

22. HAIRY LIP FERN

_Cheilanthes vestita_ (_C. lanosa_)

Growing on rocks, Southern New York to Georgia. Six to fifteen inches high, with brown and shining stalks.

_Fronds._--Oblong-lance-shaped, rough with rusty hairs, twice-pinnate; _pinnæ_ rather distant, triangular-ovate, cut into oblong, more or less incised pinnules; _fruit-dots_ roundish; _indusium_ formed by the reflexed margins of the lobes which are pushed back by the matured sporangia.

Till a few years ago the most northern station for the Hairy Lip Fern was supposed to be within the limits of New York City. The plant was discovered, in 1866 or 1867, on Manhattan Island, near Fort Tryon, growing on rocks with an eastern exposure. If one should visit this station to-day he would find himself at 196th Street, in the city of New York, some two hundred and thirty-three yards west of the Kingsbridge road, and I fear there would be no trace of this to us rare fern.

Since then the plant has been discovered close to the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie.

Its narrowly oblong, dull-green fronds, more or less covered with red-brown hairs, which give it a somewhat rusty appearance, spring from the clefts and ledges of rocks.

23. HAY-SCENTED FERN

_Dicksonia pilosiuscula_ (_D. punctilobula_)

Two to three feet high; hill-sides, meadows, and thickets from Canada to Tennessee.

_Fronds._--Ovate-lance-shaped, long-tapering, pale-green, thin and very delicate in texture, slightly glandular and hairy, usually thrice-pinnatifid; _pinnæ_ lance-shaped, pointed, repeating in miniature outline of frond; _pinnules_ cut again into short and obtuse lobes or segments; _fruit-dots_ each on an elevated globular receptacle on a _recurved toothlet_; _indusium_ cup-shaped, open at the top.

In parts of the country, especially from Connecticut southward, the Hay-scented Fern is one of the abundant plants. Though not essentially a rock-loving plant, it rejoices in such rocky, upland pastures as crown many of our lower mountain ranges, "great stretches of grayish or sage-green fields in which every bowlder and outcrop of rock is marked by masses of the bright-green fronds of _Dicksonia_, over which the air moves lazily, heavy with the peculiar fragrance of this interesting fern." Its singularly delicate, tapering, pale-green fronds, curving gracefully in every direction, rank it among our most beautiful and noticeable ferns. Often along the roadsides it forms great masses of feathery foliage, tempting the weary pedestrian or bicycler to fling himself upon a couch sufficiently soft and luxurious in appearance to satisfy a sybarite. But I can testify that the Hay-scented Fern does not make so good a bed as it promises.

Two years ago, during a memorably hot August, an afternoon drive over an unused mountain road brought us to a picturesque spot where the clear stream tumbled into a rock-paved basin, suggesting so vividly the joy of

"---- the cool silver shock Of the plunge in a pool's living water,"

that then and there we resolved soon to pitch our tent upon its banks. In all respects it was not a suitable camp site. There were no balsams or evergreens of any kind available for bedding in the neighborhood, so when, a few days later, we had taken up our quarters just above the rock-paved pool, we went into our temporary back-yard where the _Dicksonia_ grew abundantly with its usual soft and seductive appearance, and gathered great armfuls for the night's rest. I must frankly own that I never slept on so hard a bed. Since then I have been more than ever inclined to believe that ferns inhabit the earth chiefly for decorative ends. In the present age they do not lend themselves as once they did to medicinal purposes. Usually they are without culinary value. So far as I know animals refuse to eat them on account of their acrid juices. And experience proves that when used as a bed they do not

"---- medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday."

The Hay-scented Fern is very sensitive, withering with the early frosts. Sometimes in the fall it bleaches almost white. Then its slender fronds seem like beautiful wraiths of their former selves.

The _Dicksonia_, as he always calls it, is Thoreau's favorite among the ferns. Its fronds are sweet-scented when crushed or in drying, and to their fragrance he was peculiarly sensitive:

"Going along this old Carlisle road ... road where all wild things and fruits abound, where there are countless rocks to jar those who venture in wagons; road which leads to and through a great but not famous garden, zoölogical and botanical, at whose gate you never arrive--as I was going along there, I perceived the grateful scent of the Dicksonia fern now partly decayed. It reminds me of all up country, with its springy mountain-sides and unexhausted vigor. Is there any essence of Dicksonia fern, I wonder? Surely that giant, who my neighbor expects is to bound up the Alleghenies, will have his handkerchief scented with that. The sweet fragrance of decay! When I wade through by narrow cow-paths, it is as if I had strayed into an ancient and decayed herb garden. Nature perfumes her garments with this essence now especially. She gives it to those who go a-barberrying and on dark autumnal walks. The very scent of it, if you have a decayed frond in your chamber, will take you far up country in a twinkling. You would think you had gone after the cows there, or were lost on the mountains."

Again:

"Why can we not oftener refresh one another with original thoughts? If the fragrance of the Dicksonia fern is so grateful and suggestive to us, how much more refreshing and encouraging, recreating, would be fresh and fragrant thoughts communicated to us from a man's experience? I want none of his pity nor sympathy in the common sense, but that he should emit and communicate to me his essential fragrance ... going a-huckleberrying in the fields of thought, and enriching all the world with his vision and his joys."

In connection with this fern Thoreau indulges in one of those whimsical, enchanting disquisitions with the spirit of which you are in complete accord, even though you may seem to contradict the letter:

"It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's-breadth to any natural object, so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension, I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns, you must forget your botany. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose. You would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced. You must be aware that nothing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You must be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are, and you will have no communication to make to the Royal Society. If it were required to know the position of the fruit-dots or the character of the indusium, nothing could be easier than to ascertain it; but if it is required that you be affected by ferns, that they amount to anything, signify anything to you, that they be another sacred scripture and revelation to you, helping to redeem your life, this end is not so easily accomplished."

GROUP V

FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE AND SIMILAR; SPORANGIA IN LINEAR OR OBLONG FRUIT-DOTS

24. LADY FERN

_Asplenium Filix-fœmina_

A wood and roadside fern, growing in all parts of the country and presenting many varying forms. One to three feet high, with tufted, straw-colored, reddish, or brownish stalks.

_Fronds._--Broadly lance-shaped, tapering toward the apex, twice-pinnate; _pinnæ_ lance-shaped; _pinnules_ oblong-lanceolate, toothed or incised; _fruit-dots_ short, curved; _indusium_ delicate, curved, sometimes shaped like a horseshoe.

The Lady Fern is found in all parts of the country. Sometimes it forms a part of the tangle of wild, graceful things which grow close to the roadside fence. Again, in company with the Silvery Spleenwort, the Evergreen Wood Fern and the Spinulose Shield Fern, forming perhaps a background for the brilliant scarlet clusters of the wild bergamot, it fringes the banks of some amber-colored brook which surprises us with its swift, noiseless flow as we stroll through the woods.

The earliest fronds uncurl in May. In June the plant is very graceful and pleasing. When growing in shaded places it is often conspicuous by reason of its bright pink or reddish stalks, which contrast effectively with the delicate green of the foliage. But in later summer, judging by my own experience, the Lady Fern loses much of its delicacy. Many of its fronds become disfigured and present a rather blotched and coarse appearance.

This seems strange in view of the fact that the plant is called by Lowe, a well-known English writer, the "Queen of Ferns," and that it is one of the few ferns to which we find reference in literature. Scott pays it the compliment, rarely bestowed upon ferns, of mentioning it by name:

"Where the copse wood is the greenest, Where the fountain glistens sheenest, Where the morning dew lies longest, There the Lady Fern grows strongest."

In English works devoted to ferns I find at least two poems, more remarkable for enthusiasm than for poetic inspiration, in its honor. I quote a portion of the one which occurs in Miss Pratt's "Ferns of Great Britain and Their Allies":

"But seek her not in early May, For a Sibyl then she looks, With wrinkled fronds that seem to say, 'Shut up are my wizard books!' Then search for her in the summer woods, Where rills keep moist the ground, Where Foxgloves from their spotted hoods, Shake pilfering insects round; When up and clambering all about, The Traveller's Joy flings forth Its snowy awns, that in and out Like feathers strew the earth: Fair are the tufts of meadow-sweet That haply blossom nigh; Fair are the whirls of violet Prunella shows hard by; But nor by burn in wood, or vale, Grows anything so fair As the plumy crest of emerald pale, That waves in the wind, and soughs in the gale, Of the Lady Fern, when the sunbeams turn To gold her delicate hair."

The other, which I give in full, on account of its quaintness, appeared in the _Botanical Looker-out_ of Edwin Lees:

"When in splendor and beauty all nature is crown'd, The Fern is seen curling half hid in the ground, But of all the green brackens that rise by the burn, Commend me alone to the sweet Lady Fern.

"Polypodium indented stands stiff on the rock, With his sori exposed to the tempest's rough shock; On the wide, chilly heath Aquilina stands stern, Not once to be named with the sweet Lady Fern.

"Filix-mas in a circle lifts up his green fronds And the Heath Fern delights by the bogs and the ponds; Through their shadowy tufts though with pleasure I turn, The palm must still rest with the fair Lady Fern.

"By the fountain I see her just spring into sight, Her texture as frail as though shivering with fright; To the water she shrinks--I can scarcely discern In the deep humid shadows the soft Lady Fern.

"Where the water is pouring forever she sits, And beside her the Ouzel, the Kingfisher flits; There, supreme in her beauty, beside the full urn, In the shade of the rock stands the tall Lady Fern.

"Noon burns up the mountain; but here by the fall The Lady Fern flourishes graceful and tall. Hours speed as thoughts rise, without any concern, And float like the spray gliding past the green Fern."

25. SILVERY SPLEENWORT

_Asplenium thelypteroides_ (_A. acrostichoides_)

Canada to Alabama and westward, in rich woods. One to three feet high.

_Fronds._--Lance-shaped, tapering both ways from the middle, once-pinnate; _pinnæ_ linear-lanceolate, deeply cut into obtuse segments; _fruit-dots_ oblong; _indusium_ silvery when young.

The Silvery Spleenwort grows in company with its kinsman, the Narrow-leaved Spleenwort, and also with many of the Aspidiums, such as the Spinulose Shield Fern, the Evergreen Wood Fern, the Christmas and Goldie's Fern. I find it growing in large patches in the rich woods, often near water, either in boggy ground or on the very edge of the clear, brown brook. Sometimes it is difficult to detect a single fertile frond in a group of plants covering many square feet of ground. This is probably owing to the deeply shaded situations which it favors, as in sunny exposures I have noticed an abundance of fertile fronds.

Its color is a dull green, the silvery indusia on the lower surfaces of the pinnæ giving the plant its English title. Although usually its fronds are larger, their outline, tapering as it does both ways from the middle, somewhat suggests that of the New York Fern. It is readily identified, as the oblong or linear fruit-dots at once proclaim it a Spleenwort, and no other member of this tribe has fronds of the same shape.

Although it cannot be classed among the rare ferns, it is absent from many promising localities, and is associated in my mind with especially successful expeditions.

26. RUE SPLEENWORT. WALL RUE

_Asplenium Ruta-muraria_

A small rock fern, growing on limestone, Vermont to Michigan and southward. Four to seven inches long, with green, slender, tufted stalks.

_Fronds._--Triangular-ovate, smooth, evergreen, twice or thrice-pinnate below; _pinnæ_ cut into stalked pinnules; _fruit-dots_ confluent at maturity, covering nearly the whole lower surface of pinnules; _indusium_ delicate.

My first acquaintance with the little Rue Spleenwort in its own home dates back to the memorable day when we discovered the new station for the Hart's Tongue.

As I have already mentioned in my description of the Purple Cliff Brake, on a chance morning call I learned that twenty-five years before the Rue Spleenwort and the Purple Cliff Brake had been found on certain cliffs which overhung some neighboring falls.

On these very cliffs a quarter of a century later we found a few specimens of each plant. The tiny fronds of the Rue Spleenwort grew from small fissures in the cliffs, flattening themselves against their rocky background.

About a month later we returned to the spot for the purpose of securing photographs of the natural gallery where the plants grew. The seamed, overhanging rocks, the neighboring stream plunging nearly two hundred feet to the ravine below, the bold opposite cliffs showing here and there through their cloak of trees, and above and beyond the smiling upland pastures, the wood-crowned hills, and the haze-softened valley, had left a picture in the mind that we hoped to reproduce, however inadequately, by means of the camera.

This morning we had approached the cliffs from an opposite direction. In climbing a gradual ascent from the bed of the stream, we found a plant of the Rue Spleenwort which was more vigorous and thrifty than any we had previously seen. In the single tuft, about as large as the palm of one's hand, we counted forty-five green fronds. Their lower surfaces, in many cases, were covered with confluent fruit-dots. The plant had much the effect of a rather small specimen of the Mountain Spleenwort. The short, broad fronds were somewhat leathery, with only a few pinnæ. Considering its lack of size, the little cluster, springing from the bare rock, made so definite and interesting a picture that we tried to photograph it as it grew. But after some time spent in striving to secure a foothold for the tripod, and at the same time for the photographer, we gave up the attempt as hopeless.

In England the Rue Spleenwort is found growing on old walls, specially on their northern sides, also on church-towers, bridges, and ruins. It is said to be difficult to cultivate.

Formerly this fern yielded a decoction which was supposed to be beneficial in attacks of pleurisy and of jaundice.

27. MOUNTAIN SPLEENWORT

_Asplenium montanum_

Connecticut and New York to Georgia. A small rock fern from two to eight inches long, with stalks brown at base.

_Fronds._--Ovate-lanceolate in outline, somewhat leathery, cut into oblong pinnæ, the lower ones of which are cut again into more or less oblong, toothed divisions, the upper ones less and less divided; _rachis_ green, broad, flat; _fruit-dots_ linear, short; _indusium_ thin, hidden at length by the sporangia, which mature in July.

With us this plant is decidedly rare. New York and Connecticut are given as its northern limits. I have found it only in one locality, in the neighborhood of a mountain lake in Ulster County, N. Y. Though growing here somewhat abundantly, the fern is so small that, unless your eyes are trained to search every cranny in the hope of some new find, you are not likely to notice it. Even with trained eyes you may readily fancy that the narrow chinks in the cliffs which rise sheerly from the lake are merely patched with moss. But when you have pulled your boat close under the shelving rocks, and have secured a hold that enables you to stand up and examine at leisure the suspicious patches, your heart bounds with delight as you get a near view of the fringe of blue-green, leathery fronds which flatten themselves against the gray cliffs. Apparently only the plants that grow under specially favorable conditions are able to develop fronds that attain a length of five or six inches. Only in what must have been almost constant shadow, under the shelving rocks, directly above the lake and refreshed always by its moisture, did I find these really attractive, thrifty-looking plants. The specimens, which were located at some distance from the lake, growing in one instance on top of a mountain, again in the shaded crevices of a cliff, were tiny, indefinite-looking plants with nothing to recommend them to any eyes save those of the fern collector. In every instance they grew from fissures in the rocks, rooting apparently in a mere pinch of earth, yet with such tenacity that it would have been very difficult to extract a plant unharmed. In almost every case they were shielded much of the time from exposure to the sun.

The large plants in the immediate vicinity of the lake were noticeably bluish-green in color.

It is to be hoped that the few known haunts of the Mountain Spleenwort will be respected in order that this rare little plant may be preserved.

28. EBONY SPLEENWORT

_Asplenium ebeneum_ (_A. platyneuron_)

Maine to Florida and westward, on rocks and hill-sides. Nine to eighteen inches high, with blackish and shining stalks.

_Fronds._--Upright, narrowly oblanceolate, fertile fronds much the taller, once-pinnate; _pinnæ_ usually alternate, oblong, finely toothed, the base auricled on the upper or on both sides; _fruit-dots_ many, oblong, nearer midvein than margin; _indusium_ silvery till maturity.

The slender fronds of the Ebony Spleenwort hold themselves with a sort of rigid grace which suggests a combination of delicacy and endurance.