72 The Ottawa Naturalist. [July 



and its surroundings harbour all but 2. These include 2 species 

 of Cystopteris (Bladder Fern), 2 species of Onoclea (the Sensitive 

 and the Ostrich), 2 species of Osmunda (the Royal and the 

 Cinnamon), the Adder's Tongue, and 2 species of Botrychium 

 (the Virginia Rattle-snake and the Ternate Grape Fern). 



The Bladder Bulblet Fern {Cystopteris bulbijera) forms a 

 tangled mass of intertwined fronds about the banks of the stream 

 and the swampy hollows of the wood. The stipe is reddish, 

 translucent and brittle; the frond takes one of two forms, either 

 short, triangular, rather longer than wide, or a very prolonged 

 narrow oblong; this latter form is usually procumbent and 

 straggling, especially where the fern grows over the talus of 

 loose limestone blocks at the foot of a shaded bank or cliff, it 

 seems to take a new lease of life. Antseus-like, at every point of 

 contact with mother eartli, I have found the frond running along 

 like a creeper in a slightlv upward plane from stone to stone with 

 a straggling growth of 4 feet or more. The species is unique 

 among our northern ferns in forming green bublets about the 

 rhachis and pinnae, whence a new fern-plant springs as soon as 

 the bublet drops to the ground. 



The other species (Cystopteris fragilis) is usually found grow- 

 ing in tufts from seams and clefts of damp rock, but like many 

 plants it has another home, in which it grows to greater size and 

 sturdiness; this second home is in crumbly soil on mounds and 

 about the upraised mossy turf at the base of trees. I gathered 

 5 or 6 fronds to-day from such a place, they were fairly rigid and 

 erect for so delicate a fern, about 12 inches in height, 4^ inches of 

 stipe, dark-brown, nearly black at the base, lighter above, green 

 on the rhachis from base to tip of frond. These erect ferns were 

 fruiting freely and growing up out of a tangled mat of smaller 

 more or less prostrate fronds hardly fruiting at all. The genus 

 develops very early in the season, but early as C. bulbijera is, 

 C. fragilis is more than a fortnight earlier; I saw this year a 

 mound of earth in my wood covered with expanded fronds 2 or 

 3 inches long by the 7th of April, and last year at the beginning 

 of May, when other ferns were in the young crosier stage, its 

 fronds were full-grown and the fruit dots appearing. 



Something must now be said about the 2 species of Onoclea 

 the Sensitive Fern (O. sensibilis) and the Ostrich Fern (0. Sfru- 

 thiopteris) . To the uninitiate eye there is little or no resemblance 

 between these ferns, but "by their fruit ye shall know them," 

 dissimilar as are the barren fronds of the two inter se, they are 

 yet more alike than the fertile fronds in either species are like 

 the sterile of their own plant ; on the other hand the fertile fronds 

 in both species differ from the sterile in the same way and for 



