VJ FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE 

 AND USUALLY SIMILAR ; FRUIT-DOTS ROUND 



orchids, I visited this swamp. It lay in a semi- 

 twilight, caused by the dense growth of cedars and 

 hemlocks. Prostrate on the spongy sphagnum be- 

 low were hosts of uprooted trees, so overrun with 

 trailing strands of partridge-vine, twin-flower, gold- 

 thread, and creeping snowberry, and so soft and 

 yielding to the feet that they seemed to have be- 

 come one with the earth. The stumps and far- 

 reaching roots of the trees that had been cut or 

 broken off above ground, instead of having been 

 uprooted bodily, had also become gardens of many 

 delicate woodland growths. Some of these decay- 

 ing stumps and outspreading roots were thickly 

 clothed with the clover-like leaflets of the wood- 

 sorrel, here and there nestling among them a pink- 

 veined blossom. On others I found side by side 

 gleaming wild strawberries and dwarf raspberries, 

 feathery fronds of Maidenhair, tall Osmundas, the 

 Crested and the Spinulose Shield Ferns, the leaves 

 of the violet, foam-flower, mitrewort, and many 

 others of the smaller, wood-loving plants. Among 

 these stumps were pools of water filled with the 

 dark, polished, rounded leaves of the wild calla, 

 and bordered by beds of moss which cushioned the 

 equally shining but long and pointed leaves of the 

 Clintonia. Near one of these pools grew a patch 

 of delicate, low-spreading plants, evidently ferns. 

 It needed only one searching look at the broad, 

 triangular, light-green fronds suggesting somewhat 

 those of a small Brake with roundish fruit-dots be- 

 low to assure me that I had found the Oak Fern. 



IQ2 



