Minnesota Plant Life. 



165 



much larger and green, adapted solely to starch-making, others 

 smaller, of a cinnamon color and devoted particularly to spore- 

 making. A third species is sometimes known as the royal fern. 

 The leaves are compoundly branched and leaflets towards the 

 tip produce spore-cases, while lower branches of the leaf make 

 leaf-green and form no spores. 



Of the common ferns belonging to the family of bracken- 

 ferns, there are the polypody, abundant upon rocks in all 



Fig. 56. Bed of ferns 



Seii.sitive fern in middle of foregrcnnd. After photograph by 

 Williams. 



parts of the state; the maiden-hair, with its slender, wire-like 

 leaf-stems and graceful leaflets, common in woodlands; the 

 bracken-fern with its loosely branched leaves; the clifif-brakes 

 growing in crevices on cliffs and high banks ; the spleen- 

 worts and lady-ferns with their delicate leaves; the walking 

 ferns found upon rocks and so named from their habit of 

 stretching out their long leaves and driving the tips into the 

 ground forming there buds from which new plants develop; 



