THE FLOWERLESS PLANTS.. 181 



plants, and travelling along in this manner from one point 

 to another. There is only one climbing fern among our 

 native plants. Equally beautiful and rare, it is fonnd 

 only in a few localities all the way from Massachusetts to 

 the West Indies. Unlike other ferns in its twining habit, 

 it has also palmate leaves, with five lobes, and bears its 

 fruit in a panicle, like the osmunda. But we need not 

 search out the rare ferns for specimens of elegance or 

 beauty. The common polypody, with its minutely divid- 

 ed leaves, covers the sides of steep wooded hills and rocky 

 precipices, and adorns with a beautiful evergreen verdure 

 their barren slopes, otherwise destitute of attractions. The 

 ferns and the mosses are peculiarly the ornaments of 

 waste and desert places, clothing with their verdure desert 

 plains and rough declivities. 



I have always attached a romantic interest to the sea- 

 weeds, whose forms remind me of the haunts of tlie 

 Nereids, of the mysterious chambers of the ocean, and 

 of all that is interesting among the deep inlets of the sea. 

 Though flowerless, they are unsurpassed in the delicate 

 arrangement of their branches, and the variety of colors 

 they display. We see them only when broken off from 

 the rocks on which they grew, and washed upon the shore, 

 where they lie, after a storm, like flowers scattered upon 

 the greensward by the scythe of the mower. When 

 branching out in the perfection of their forms, underneath 

 the clear briny tide, they are unsurpassed by few plants 

 in elegance. The artist has taken advantage of their pe- 

 culiar branching forms and their delicate hues, and weaves 

 them into chaplets of many beautiful designs. 



The sea-weeds seem to be allied to the lichens, and are 

 considered by some botanists as the same plants modified 

 by growing under water, and tinted by the iodine and 

 bromine M'hich they imbibe from the sea. 



The lichens are the lowest tribe in the scale of vegeta- 



