CHEILANTHES VESTITA. 

 HAIRY LIP-FERN. 



NATURAL ORDER, PILICES. 



CHEILANTHES VESTITA, Swartz. — Fronds broadly lanceolate, like the stalks hirsute with rusty 

 hairs, bipinnate; pinnae triangular-ovate; pinnules oblong, obtuse, more or less incised; 

 the ends of the lobes reflexed to form separate herbaceous involucres. Fronds four to 

 eight inches long, l^ecoming smooth above. (Chapman's J^/o7-a 0/ //w Sotitltern United 

 States. See also Wood's Class-Bool- 0/ Botany, (^\a.y'?, Flora of the Northern United States, 

 Eaton's Ferns of North America, and Williamson's Ferns of Kentucky.) 



ERNS have no small part of the world allotted to them. 

 Though but a fraction of the vegetable kingdom, they 

 share every portion of it with flowering plants. There is no 

 spot, however rocky and dry, but some ferns may be found as 

 well as where the soil is deep, and in damp or marshy places. In 

 altitudes high up among the clouds ferns exist, as well as in low 

 situations near the level of the sea. In the arctics and in the 

 tropics — there is scarcely a spot on the habitable globe wherein 

 the lover of plants may not expect to find a fern. The greater 

 part of the Ferns of the Eastern United States love the shade 

 of woods, or to be in rich or damp meadows ; and those that 

 live on rocks are usually found where there is shade above them, 

 or cool moisture about the roots. But our present species, 

 Chcilanthcs vestita — the Hairy Lip-Fern — is one which grows in 

 the clefts of dry rocks, sometimes in exposed sunny places, 

 where often in the summer season it dries and curls up, and ap- 

 pears as if dead. In this condition it has been found by the 

 writer on rocks along the Schuylkill river, and in Southern 

 Illinois. 



Most species of fern are admired for their thin, filmy fronds; 



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