1916] The Ottawa Naturalist. 125 



"GLEANINGS IN FERNLAND." 

 By Frank Morris, Peterborough Collegiate. 



{Continued from page 110.) 



From our summer schedule of trips, the first place to suffer 

 a " washout " this wet season was the Bruce Peninsula between 

 Wiarton and Tobermory; the next was Manitoulin Island, where 

 the Parsley Fern has been recorded; and the third was the north 

 margin of Twin Lake, near Port Sydney. Here grows a mag- 

 nificent colony of the Virginia Chain Fern (and with it the 

 handsome rein-orchid Habenaria hlephariglottis). The Wood- 

 wardia I have never found except here, and, as you maj^ 

 remember from our "field day" in 1910, the sight of it in 

 its ordered ranks made a profound impression. The fronds 

 seemed all standing to attention, and facing one way out 

 over the "mud lake" from their beds of sphagnum, buck- 

 beans, cranberry, and plants of the heath family. I suggested 

 that sunlight was the key to the mystery, for it certainly was 

 mysterious to see those silent forms standing in the midst of 

 an open space in the heart of forest and swamp, as though all 

 endowed with one consciotis purpose, and obeying some unseen 

 power: "Eyes front !" and every member of every rank stood 

 focused to the same point in space. This was one of the "moot 

 questions" referred to before. The fern is peculiarly fond of 

 moistvire, often growing submerged in water, and spreading, 

 by very long runners under the surface. Just as the fruiting 

 pinnae of the Crested Fern are twisted into a new plane at right 

 angles to the rhachis in order to protect the sporangia from the 

 sun's rays, so where there are not shrubs enough to throw heal- 

 ing shadows for a colony of Virginia Chain Fern, every stalk 

 will be found twisted on the underground runner so .as to face 

 due south to the sun at its zenith; by keeping "eyes front" to 

 the foe, the fronds preserve the spore-cases from parching and 

 eva- oration. This was first observed by D. C. Eaton, author 

 of "Ferns of North America." 



A second moot point was the determination of one of the 

 smaller species of Botrychium. This was a plant first found 

 by me under cedars fringing the tamarack swamp near New- 

 tonville. The first colony was discovered west of the corduroy 

 road that leads to Starkville. Since then I have found the 

 plant — in hundreds — at nearly a dozen points, over a space 

 whose diameter is perhaps 1% miles. I have also found it in 

 the neighbourhood of the Rideau, of Stony Lake, of Peter- 

 borotigh, and of Garden Hill. Always under cedars in rich 

 swamps, usually in thin moss, occasionally in sphagnum, often 



