The Plants of our Woods and Fields. 25 



when dead and dry ; the tiny moonvvorts {Botrychiiim), which are v^ery 

 accommodating, and root readily in the lawn or on the grassy banks, and 

 come out afresh when the year is on the decline ; and, lastly, the regal 

 flowering ferns, stately and handsome as flowers, but never knowing any 

 distinguishable floral organs (the microscopic botanist only able to tell you 

 where they are), — what a catalogue of native plants, too little cultivated, 

 yet all waiting for a better acquaintance with man ! Many of these will 

 grow where nothing else would. We can see them springing up spontaneously 

 in the cool, shaded fronts of city houses, where the sun never shines : others 

 spring out of old mortar, and from between the crevices of walls ; and others 

 under the shade of trees. Those who visit conservatories and greenhouses 

 are often attracted by the superb ferns now so universally cultivated. Most 

 of them are from foreign climates, and some from tropical regions ; but 

 others, whose forms are the most singular, are from climates no more genial 

 than our own. The same care bestowed upon our New-England ferns 

 would, in the course of time, produce as curious and as grotesque forms. 

 The odd forms of the hart's-tongue are the effects of high culture, causing 

 an abnormal condition in the young seedling plants. We have specimens 

 of undulated fronds of this fern from species taken from wild specimens 

 brought from the Azores. The singular crested variety of the buckler-fern 

 {Aspidium fUix mas) is but an accidental variation by seed, and carefully 

 propagated ; but any careful observer can find similar peculiarities in the 

 fronds of native species, as we know from experience. Cultivation will 

 produce others ; and the facility with which they produce offspring offers an 

 incentive to the experiment. We have said nothing of the beautiful and 

 peculiar species of the South : suffice it to say that we have the superb 

 golden-rooted fern {Acrostic/uim aureum), whose dark-green shining 

 fronds rise to the height of eight feet ; the tropical form of the common 

 brake is seen along the Gulf coast ; the pretty trichiomanes has been found 

 by Curtis in East Tennessee, and elsewhere by others ; and the delicate 

 anemia, with its black, velvety root-stock, of Southern Florida, reminds 

 us of co-species of Brazil. Our native ferns, then, sustain the high reputa- 

 tion which their flowering sister-plants possess ; and the cultivator of beauti- 

 ful ferns can find at home the grace and beauty in these plants which wealth 

 seeks abroad in costly importations of European or Asiatic novelties. The 



VOL. I. 4 



