ASPLENIUM EBENEUM. 



EBONY SPLEENVVORT. 



NATURAL ORDER, FILICE.S. (POLVPODIACE^.) 



ASPLENIUM EBENEUM, Alton. — Froiids upright (eight to sixteen inches high), pinnate, lance- 

 linear in outline ; pinnae (one half to one inch long) many, lanceolate, or the lower oblong, 

 slightly scythe-shaped, finely serrate, sessile, the dilated base auricled on the upper or 

 both sides ; fruit dots numerous on both sides of the elongated mid-vein ; stipe and rhachis 

 blackish-purple and shining. (Gray's Manual of tlic Botany of the A'orthern Unitcti Stales, 

 See also Wood's Class-Book of Botany, and Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States.) 



"'Tis sweet, in the green spring. 



To gaze upon the wakening fields around ; 

 Birds in the thicket sing, 



Winds whisper, waters prattle from the ground ; 

 A thousand odors rise, 



Breathed up from blossoms of a thousand dyes." 



[very one who is fond of wild flowers, whether it be as a 

 botanist in love with the " amiable science," or simply as a 

 collector, and an admirer of beauty for its own sake, has felt the 

 glow which inspired Bryant to warble forth these lines, thrilling 

 through his veins as the warm days of spring covered the bosom 

 of mother earth with flowers. But flowers are frail things at the 

 best, and, as the same poet says, — 



" If man come not to gather 

 The roses where they stand, 

 They fade among the foliage ; 

 They cannot seek his hand." 



In this respect the student of cryptogamic botany — the di- 

 vision in which ferns are placed — has a great advantage over 

 the admirer of phasnogamic, or flowering plants. For while the 



