ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS. 

 SWEET SHIELD-FERN. 



NATURAL ORDER, FILICES. 



AspiDiUM FRAGRANS, Swartz. — Fronds four to twelve inches high, glandular and aromatic, nar- 

 rowly lanceolate, with linear-oblong pinnately-parted pinnae; their crowded divisions 

 oblong, obtuse, toothed or nearly entire, nearly covered beneath with the very large, thin, 

 imbricated indusia, which are orbicular with a narrow sinus, the margin sparingly glandu- 

 liferous and often ragged. (Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern Unitea States. 

 See also Wood's Class-Book of Botany, and Eaton's Ferns of North America.) 



lOME families of plants are peculiar in their characters; 

 and the genera and species have a certain general 

 resemblance to each other, so that few can be mistaken in their 

 relationship. Thus those who know little of botany as a science 

 can usually tell a fern when they see it, and can understand by 

 this what a botanist means when he speaks of any particular 

 family of plants as being a very natural one. 



From this particular sameness in the general aspects of ferns, 

 one might suppose that litde could be said of each species in 

 detail. In common language one might imagine that a "fern 

 was merely a fern, and nothing more ; " but in truth beneath this 

 general uniformity of dress lies a great variety of character, and 

 the lessons we may derive from each species are almost as 

 numerous as we might gather from the study of individual human 

 beings. We are often told of the lessons we may learn from 

 flowers; but the lessons from plants which have no proper 

 flowers, as ferns have not, are no less inviting. In some respects 

 they have advantages which flowering plants have not, for often 

 a flowering plant possesses but litde interest to the average 

 botanist when it is not in bloom, while the fern is generally inter- 



6 (S>) 



