24 TJie Plants of oitr Woods and Fields. 



THE PLANTS OF OUR WOODS AND FIELDS. 



The high regard which the native plants of this country hold abroad ren- 

 ders their better acquaintance and their cultivation an object of interest to 

 the garden. The wide area, of thousands of miles extent, embraces the 

 most showy, and likewise the most charming, herbaceous sorts which are 

 sufficiently hardy to endure the winters of this vicinity. An article of the 

 necessary brevity for these pages could do but feeble justice to their 

 claims ; and, if we take a very superficial and hasty glance at them, it will 

 at least serve as an introduction to their merits, which could be urged to a 

 greater expansion of detail. 



Beginning, in our enumeration, at the lower orders, the admirer oi ferns 

 may find in the superb fronds of the Californian species some of the most 

 attractive of these plants. Need we mention scarcely others than the 

 representatives of the golden Gymnogrammes of that favored region ; the 

 elegant forms of Adiatum, or maiden-hair ; the hardier and alpine ones of 

 the Sierra Nevada, or the brakes {Fteris) of the Yo Semite Valley ; the two 

 new parasitic Polypodies described by Professor Eaton ; and the rock-brakes 

 {Allosurus) near the Bay of San Francisco, hinting to us of novelties yet to 

 be found, and worth the search ? For the open border, we have, in New 

 England alone, species well suited for cultivation. Our maiden-hair be- 

 comes always attractive, and grows without difficulty ; the climbing fern, 

 once thought so rare, but now found in several new localities, can scarcely 

 be excelled, even by foreign species of the same genus ; the curious broadly 

 lanceolate fronds of the rare Scolopmdrimn, rediscovered near Pursh's origi- 

 nal locality the past summer ; the more curious walking-leaf {Camptosorus), 

 which we have successfully cultivated in a covered glass jar in days prior 

 to the Wardian cases ; the magnificent ostrich-fern {Struthiopteris), now 

 growing in the shade of our little garden ; the pretty Polypodiums, which 

 will survive transplantation, and fit themselves to the rock-work ; the ebon}-- 

 stemmed and black-striped spleenworts of exquisite proportions, and the 

 larger and stronger species, which adapt themselves to the garden ; the 

 bladder-ferns {Cy stopfer is), delicate and graceful ; the wood-ferns {Aspicii- 

 z^w), enlivening the woods in mid-winter with their sempervirent fronds ; the 

 sensitive-fern, whose spikes of fruit-capsules are used for mantle ornaments 



