294 Asplemtim Filix-Fcemijia, [zoe 



J jj 



bent or creeping stem called a rootstock. Where this rootstock is 

 very short it is usually erect, but is little more than a crown. 



There are, however, in America, north of the Tropics, several 

 species which occasionally produce a somewhat lengthened erect 

 stem called in such cases a caudex. Professor Eaton, in Ferns of 

 North America, says of Aspidium 7nargmale : " Pi'ofessor Robin- 

 son has remarked of this species: 'This comes nearer being a tree 

 fern than any other of our species ; the caudex covered by the bases 

 of fronds of previous seasons sometimes resting on bare rocks for 

 four or five inches without roots or fronds. 



Prof L. M. Underwood, in Our Native Fenie and Their Allies, 

 writing of Aspidiitm conterminum var. strigosum^ another of the 

 shield ferns, which is found in Florida, says: " Rootstock stout, erect, 

 often extending a foot above the ground, bearing a crown of fronds.*' 



Mr. J. H. Ten-Eyck Burr, of Cazenovia, N. Y., informs me also 

 that he has collected Osmtmda ci7ina7nomea in swamps at Burt Lake 

 in Northern Michigan with erect rootstocks about six inches in 

 height and four inches in diameter, 



California, somewhat given to boasting of the size of her produc- 

 tions, may now also claim the nearest approach our country can 

 show to the tree ferns. There have appeared in some of the daily 

 papers accounts of a native tree fern received last year from Hum- 

 boldt County, by Mr. John McLaren, Superintendent of the Golden 

 Gate Park, who takes much interest in the native flora of our coast. 

 The best developed of these plants has an erect caudex two feet in 

 height, five or six inches in diameter, dividing near the apex and 

 crowned with very large fronds, the largest more than five feet in 

 length and over two feet in width. 



These ferns belong to a species known to botanists as Aspknium 



Filix-fi 



' Fern, which is very widely 



spread over the extra-tropical northern hemisphere, and found also 



in the southern. The species runs into many varieties, as is usual 



in plants of wide distribution, and has, of course, many synonyms. 



This pardcular form has received the name var. cydosonmi. It has 



deeply incised pinnules, and the sori are rounder than in the usual 

 form. 



Remarkable as is the size of these specimens they are shown by 

 examples found in Wildwood Glen near Saucellto to be only a 

 greater development of a not uncommon form. In the upper part 



y 



