The American Botanist 



VOL. XXIX FEBRUARY, 1923 No. 1 



High in the air the maple* ihow 

 Their first faint tints of crimson glow; 

 Hazel and poplar everywhere 

 Are lifting pollen on the air; 

 From plumy elms in gray and hroton 

 The bud-scales shimmer softl}f down; 

 The mourning — cloal^ is on the wing 

 And Vtandering breezes whisper, "Spring." 



THE RESURRECTION FERN 



By WiLLARD N. Clute. 



TT^PIPHYTES are not abundant in temperate regions. At 

 •'-^ best the list includes only a few algae, mosses and lichens 

 with no suggestion of higher forms such as the ferns and 

 flowering plants, but as the tropics are approached the variety 

 of epiphytes increases enormously until in the rain-forest 

 bordering the equator a host of orchids, ferns, pitcher-plants, 

 bromcliads, peppers and numerous other flowering plants 

 crowd the branches of the giant forest trees. 



In our Southern States we find the first outlying colonies 

 (if the flowering-plant epiphytes in the gray or Spanish moss 

 {Tillandsia nsneoidcs) which is not a moss at all but a mem- 

 ber of the pine-apple family in good, regular standing. With 

 it grows the subject of our sketch, the gray polypody or res- 

 urrection fern {Polypodimn incanum). The species, through 

 growing in the same general region divide the territory be- 

 tween them, the Tillandsia preferring the upper branches 



