4 THE PLANT WORLD. 



the air! Some blossoms seem to be preferred to others, though all 

 are tasted. Here on this bright red Indian Pink {Castilleia), though 

 more often called the Painter's Brush, are three fat bees and a 

 beautiful butterfly, just gorging themselves. Even children are fond 

 of this flower, pulling it to pieces and sucking the sweet juices it con- 

 tains. Three shades of red are represented in the corolla. It is quite 

 a delightful surprise to find these off-color flowers so entirely different 

 from the rest of its family; they might be called beautiful black sheep, 

 and among all the families may almost always be found one. 



DRYOPTERIS CRISTATAxMARGINALIS. 

 By Margaret S/ossoii. 



NEAR the central part of Vermont, the Green Mountains and a 

 range locally known as the Western Hills, run parallel for 

 some little distance. The country between is very hilly. To 

 the east the valley dips, and extending for perhaps half a 

 mile between densely wooded hills rising abruptly on either side, 

 forms a woodland swamp. The trees in the swamp are mostly tama- 

 racks, while underfoot, beds of sphagnum, saturated with water, from 

 the underlying bog, make the swamp almost impassable. There in 

 early Spring, one finds trailing arbutus, later the white azalea; and in 

 June, deep in the swamp in cool, moist hummocks, the showy lady's 

 slipper {Cypripedium spectabile.) There, also, usually half imbedded 

 in some crumbling log, grows Dryopteris cristatay^marginalis. At first 

 sight this fern suggests cristata; looking more closely, one sees a 

 difference. The more heavily fruited of the fronds have something 

 of the erectness and rigidity of cristata, but the pinnae of many of the 

 fronds droop a little with a slight upward curve, the color of the fronds 

 is more blue, the growth of the rootstock is terminal and the fronds 

 form a circle around the curled-up buds. (In cristata the growth of 

 the rootstock is lateral and the buds push out sideways beyond the 

 fronds.) 



I find the rootstock often producing buds in the axils of the old 

 stipe bases. These buds develop into young plants, and as each has 

 its central terminal crown, which grows straight upward, the result- 

 ing effect is a crowded cliister of plants of all sizes with their root- 

 stocks firmly welded together. The fronds of all the young plants of 

 this fern vary from triangular to ovate in outline, but the fronds of 

 the young plants derived from axillary buds of rootstocks seem older 

 from the beginning, than the fronds of young plants springing di- 

 rectly from spores; they have more often the long, acuminate pinnae 



