1906] Davenport, Hybrid Asplenium new to Vermont 13 



rocks. Here his attention was attracted by a clump of ferns with 

 pinnae which appeared abnormal and he took specimens together 

 with others of Asplenium Ruta-muraria, which were growing three 

 feet from the clump in question. On closer inspection later Mr. 

 Woolson suspected that the anomalous fern was the result of a cross 

 between A. Ruta-muraria and A. Trichomanes and returning to the 

 spot he "went on hands and knees " over practically all the neighboring 

 ground in search of the other parent plant. The only species growing 

 in abundance was A. Ruta-muraria, much of it young; but a few 

 fruited plants were found not over a foot from the particular clump 

 in question. About eighteen feet away there was some Pellaea atro- 

 purpurea, with a "touch of Camptosorus and A. ebeneum" but no 

 A. Trichomanes in sight although the habitat appeared just right for 

 that species. However, on following a dip in the ridge over another 

 rise and down over the edge of a steep bank facing the north, Mr. 

 Woolson found an abundance of A . Trichomxines, as well as a second 

 lot under the shelving edge of a ridge a little more to the east. Either 

 place was fully a hundred and twenty-five feet from the rock bearing 

 the hybrid fern. 



While admitting that the peculiar fern looks much like a hybrid 

 between A. Trichomanes and A. Ruta-muraria, Mr. Woolson ex- 

 presses doubt as to the power of the wind as a possible agency in 

 transporting the spores of A. Trichomanes to such a distance and 

 over such barriers. 



But we know that the wind is capable of doing most extraordinary 

 things, and it is always the unexpected that happens. So many 

 instances of this have occurred in my own experience that I have 

 long ago ceased to wonder at anything of the kind being brought 

 about through the agency of the wind, and the fact of fern spores being 

 swirled about and distributed into all manner of seemingly inaccessi- 

 ble places is not so great a source of wonderment to me as the facts of 

 hybridization itself. 



Ferns are constantly intermingling in vast numbers under condi- 

 tions most favorable for interbreeding and producing a great diversity 

 of variant forms, yet these forms are for the greater part readily refer- 

 able to one or the other of well established genera and species. Seldom 

 indeed do we find any that can be considered for an absolute certainty 

 as hybrid combinations; such, however, seems to be the case in the 

 present instance beyond any reasonable doubt, and the apparent 



