I 62 ASPIDIUM MUNITUM. CHAMISSO S SHIELD-FERN. 



with the rhizome is so abundantly covered with broad, chaffy 

 scales, as to look like the feathered head of a bird. Sometimes 

 these chaffy scales extend a long way up the stipe or stem of 

 the frond, occasionally reaching the foliaceous portion. It is, 

 however, variable in these and other respects in common with 

 most ferns. Judging by numerous specimens in the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the species is more than 

 usually variable. Ten years after it was named by Kaulfuss, it 

 was collected by Nuttall on Wyeth's expedition of 1834, and the 

 specimens then obtained are so different from the original spe- 

 cies, as to appear quite distinct, and are labelled in Nuttall's 

 handwriting "Aspidium Columbianum," which is erased and 

 under-written "Aspidium Oreganum," as it was uncertain whether 

 or not to make it a distinct species. And the specimens vary very 

 much in the size of the plants according to location. Palmer's 

 from Gadalupe Island has a frond of over two and a half feet, with 

 a stipe of more than a foot in length. A small and very narrow 

 form is marked in Nuttall's collection 'Aspidium Willamettense, 

 from the Rocks of the Willamette." Fronds collected by Prof 

 Bolander from Oakland, California, are only about two feet in 

 length in all, the stipe not being much over eight inches. The 

 specimens collected by Bigelow in California, on the Whipple 

 exploring expedition, are not more than six inches long, while 

 others from Dr. Gibbon are about the size we have chosen for 

 our illustration. Our specimen, however. Fig. i, as may be seen 

 by there being only a very small portion of the frond in fruit, is a 

 comparatively young one, for in mature plants fully one-half of 

 the frond may be fertile, just as we find under similar conditions 

 the eastern Aspidium acrosticJioidcs. 



P\s, in the case of the Christmas-Shield Fern of the East, the 

 Western collector could not say he had to wait 



" Till the spring blossomed again, 

 Till the birch first unfolded its leaves on the shore 

 And the robin first warbled its strain, 



as in the language of the poet Percival he would have to say 



