/'EA'A^S. 229 



The Lady Fern of our forest haunts, is a graceful, lovely, fern of a 

 bright tender tint of green and delicate of texture, withering quickly 

 after being plucked ; not bearing to be roughly handled or exposed to 

 any sudden change of temperature, which soon robs it of its freshness 

 and elasticity. In height, the largest fronds vary from one to three 

 feet ; the root-stock is thick, black, and knotty, the stipe blackish at the 

 root-stock, perennial, diaffy, and the frond circinate. When it first issues 

 forth in the month of May, the underside of the tender frond is 

 whitish, from numerous minute silvery hairs, which disappear after the 

 plant is more fully developed. 



In the van mol/e they are seen giving a soft and somewhat silky 

 look to the pinnules. This form is more lax and drooping than the 

 common typical form. 



The fruit dots of the Lady Fern are placed slantwise on the back of 

 the veins, nearer to the mid-rib than the margin ; indusia at first white, 

 turning reddish brown in maturity, long, narrow, sac-like, and pointed at 

 each extremity ; slightly curving inwards ; the pinnae are numerous, 

 long pointed ; pinnules oblong, toothed at the margins ; the margins 

 of the fertile pinnules are slightly concave ; the rachis is pale green, 

 slightly channelled. The habitat of this elegant fern is in damp woods, 

 at the roots of old trees, often associated with Aspidium spinulosum, or 

 at the margin of forest creeks among other moisture-loving ferns. 



Several varieties of the Lady Fern are met with in the Douro and 

 Smith woods, about Lakefield, and are common in other townships 

 North of Lake Ontario. 



The Narrow-leaved Lady Fern — A. Filix-fceniina, var. angustuniy 

 is a distinct form. It differs in many respects from the type of A. Filix* 

 fcetnina. The colour is a dull deep green ; the stipe is nearly double 

 the length of the leafy frond, the pinnae are more distant, narrower in 

 outline, much divided ; sori very abundant, so much so indeed as to cover 

 the entire inner surface of the fertile frond, and contract the pinnules 

 considerably. From its narrowed, contracted, appearance, this species 

 has got the name of Skeleton Fern. The rachis and stipe are strongly 

 nerved and channelled ; not very chaffy at the root-stock, but hard and 

 black. This attains to the height of three feet, in wet spongy ground. 

 There is a great tendency to assuming a tasselled form. Sometimes 

 whole plants will present this appearance, the upper pairs of pinnae 

 being gathered into rosettes, so as to shorten and alter the form 

 of the frond. In a beaver meadow, near Preston's Woods, Lakefield, 

 I found numbers of fronds thus deformed, and it appears to me 

 that it is caused by a diseased condition of the rachis, probably from 



