The American Botanist 



VOL. XII. JOLIET, ILL., MARCH, 1907. No, 2 



THE COMMON BRACKEN AS FOOD. NilTyc^^t, 



BY ANNA D. DALGITY. ^OTANICaL 



A LMOST everyone knows the common brake or bracken, ^'^^Oen. 

 •**• {Pteridium aquilinum) , found in woods throughout the 

 greater part of the world. Excepting possibly Australia 

 (a), it is in Western Oregon, Washington and British Colum- 

 bia, that it reaches its highest development. In this Ameri- 

 can area it is not only the most common fern, but the largest 

 as well. In the damp woods it grows up through the ever- 

 green shrubbery of salal, Oregon grape, and huckleberry so 

 densely as to make the woods almost impassible. In the drier 

 regions it reaches a height of three to eight feet, and in hol- 

 lows where the ground is specially rich it reaches a height 

 of fourteen feet. Occasionally there are four or five to the 

 square foot, but when they are so dense as this, they interfere 

 with each other and do not reach the maximum growth. 

 The tallest are in woods where there is shade, for this makes 

 stems and leaf-stalks grow longer. In cleared fields, how- 

 'ijver, they come up as densely as in woods, but rarely reach 

 a height of over six feet, usually two to four. In new lands 

 they are bad weeds, coming up year after year. The farmer 

 considers them a pest since they are tough and hard to destroy ; 

 and the horizontal, subterranean stems, which are an inch or 

 less in diameter, and as much as ten feet long, are hard to 

 cut. The large amount of starch found in the stems produces 

 numerous shoots and is their source of supply during their 

 rapid growth. 



(a). Engler and Prantl, Die Naturliche Pflanzenfamilien, Teill, 

 j^ 1 Abteilung 4, s. 49, 1902. 

 CD 



^:c. 



