52 Rhodora ' [March 



Obs. — Under favorable conditions fertile fronds of nos. 3 and 4 

 remain green nearly all winter. It may be well to add, however, that, 

 as is the case with nearly all of these ferns, both fertile and sterile 

 fronds, when surviving, become flaccid in autumn and lie prostrate 

 through the winter, becoming more or less discolored. 



* * Rootstock decumbent, growth lateral, extending horizontally. 



5. Nephkodium cristatum, Richard (Aspidium, Swartz). Late 

 sterile fronds remaining green all winter, fertile fronds withering 

 gradually, long lanceolate with nearly triangular deeply pinnatifid 

 pinnae, normally acute, or obtuse at the apex, but in var. Clintonianum 

 long acuminate; lobes in both forms bluntly toothed; sori mediator 

 nearly so. Low swampy woodlands. Me., N. H., Vt., Mass., R. I., Ct. 



Obs. — In var. Clintonianum the rootstock is much stouter, and the 

 crowns are more loosely built up as it were, the crosiers overlapping 

 one another irregularly much after the manner of the knuckles on a 

 half closed hand. The large ovate and lanceolate scales with which 

 the crosiers are clothed shade from light amber to dark brown in 

 both forms, and on old fronds the rounded backs of the stipes shade 

 to blackish brown. 



An interesting form with apparently strictly herbaceous fertile 

 fronds that perish altogether in early autumn has been collected in 

 Vermont by Miss Margaret Slosson for several years, and may prove 

 to be distinct; however as some sterile fronds on two or three plants 

 of it that have been growing on my own grounds are still green at 

 present writing (Feb. 5th), I am not ready to accord to it specific 

 rank; I have, however, provisionally named it Nephrodium cristatum, 

 Rich., var. Slossonae, n. var. Fully matured plants of this form are 

 quite as large as, if not larger, and with broader fronds than var. 

 Clintonianum ; the texture is thinly herbaceous and the sori are 

 arranged in a close costal series much as in Nephrodium Goldieanum, 

 from which, however, it is wholly distinct. I shall have more to say 

 about it at another time. 



A conspicuous feature in all of the cristatum forms in winter is 

 seen in the deeply sunken blackish grooves in the upper coriaceous 

 surfaces, and the elevated lines beneath which mark the course of 

 the venation. 



6. Nephrodium Boottii, Davenport in Gilbert, Catl. 1901 

 (Aspidium, Tuckerman). Fertile fronds on my grounds at present 



