98 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Sept. 



plants of the Yellow Lady's Slipper; I was groping about in 

 this wood and had knelt down to examine some vines of the 

 beautiful little Twin-flower (Linncea horealis) when I spied some 

 small spikes of a strange fern; they were not more than 3 or 4 

 inches high and were evidently a Botrychium. I sent some 

 specimens to the late Dr. Fletcher, of Ottawa, who thought they 

 were B. matricariae , but he said he had never found the Matricary 

 Grape Fern (now called B. ramosum), and my plant might prove 

 a variety of B. simplex. This was my own feeling at the time 

 and I was confirmed in it the following season when I found 

 B. matricariae (ramosum) growing plentifullv in the Algonquin 

 Park. 



I have visited the colony every season since and have ob- 

 served the plants closely. They shoAv above the ground early in 

 June ; probably soon after the floor of the wood ceases to be inun- 

 dated and the saturation of the vegetable mould is relieved by 

 evaporation. Well-grown plants attain a height of from 7 to 9 

 inches (panly under ground) by the middle of July, at which 

 time the spores are shed; by the end of July, or earh' in August, 

 the plant becomes flaccid and wilts to the ground. Specimens 

 gathered in the middle of June are about 4 inches long, the sterile 

 frond longer than the fruiting, but in the mature plant these 

 relations are reversed, the fertile frond considerably exceeding 

 the barren; the appearance and shape of this latter are remark- 

 ably constant it develops from about the middle of the main 

 stem, occasionally lower, sometimes a good deal higher; it is 

 always long-stalked and ends in a leaf blade of from 2 to 4 pairs 

 of obovate or cuneate, sometimes nearly lunate, sessile lobes; 

 these lobes are nearly opposite, and beyond them a single lobe, 

 boldly notched, forms the apex of the frond. The plant is very 

 fleshy and pale-green, more fleshy and pale than B. ramosum, 

 W'hich in turn is not so foliaceous or dark-green as B. lanccolatum. 



In pressed specimens the bud at the base is rarelv, if ever, 

 visible, owing to the stem above the root being wrapped in the 

 dry brown sheaths of previous years; in B. ramosum the next 

 year's bud is almost always conspicuous as a dark-green projec- 

 tion in the pressed specimen. In the lobes of the leaf there occurs 

 no mid-vein, just a fan-like spreading of the free, forking veins, 

 from their wide indeterminate base in the rhachis; in B. ratnpsum 

 there does seem to be a mid-vein (doubtless lost in ramifving) i 

 which governs the growth of the secondary veins through the -': 

 lobes and subdivisions of the leaf; these in B. ramosum con- 

 sequently tend to terminate in a point, blunter indeed than those "^ 

 of B. lanceolattim, but distinct from B. simplex, which would seem 

 to be a miniature and close kinsman of the famous Moonwort 



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