At home with the Hart's Tongue 



R. C. BENEDICT. 



■ 



To the writer's mind the hart's tongue is the most 

 interesting of all our American ferns. It is probably 

 not the rarest; certainly it is not the most beautiful, 

 but there is a charm about it in its exclusiveness and 

 its odd appearance which render it distinct. Probably 

 added to this, in the writer's mind is the fact that it grows 

 in the limestone hills of his home section of Central 

 Xew York which a boyhood of tramping after wild flow- 

 ers and ferns made especially cherished in memory. 



The hart's tongue became an object of interest to me 

 through the accounts of it in Parsons' "How to Know 

 the Ferns" which indeed made all the ferns described 

 interesting. With knowledge that it grew in the James- 

 ville region a few miles southeast of my home town I be- 

 gan to tramp frequently in that direction and to look 

 as I found later, in the most unlikely places for it. For 

 a while I examined almost every plant of broad-leaved 

 sedge along the roadside. I was the veriest beginner. 

 I discoxered afterward that it was too exclusive to fre- 

 quent the roadside. 



Finally I found it after a long day's tramp in the 

 region west of Janiesville. I had hunted for it all day 

 without success, and was making all speed to get back 

 to the road where I had left my wheel. The descrip- 

 tion of this locality will furnish a good idea of all the sta- 

 tions for harts tongue in the Jamesville region. 1 

 had reached the edge of a ledge of limestone overlook- 

 ing a small valley. The limestone dropped twenn 

 to fifty feet or more in places to a steep talus ot large 

 sharp chips of the limestone. Below the talus sloped 



steeply t<> the bottom of the valley two hundred feet 



or more below. The top of the talus slope was lair > 



open with a few scattered butternuts and basswooos 



(95) 



