COMMERCIAL FERN GATHERING 91 
green the plant has use for them. . . . Any person 
willing to exterminate our ferns at $2.50 a wagon-load 
ought to be converted.” 
Mrs. Orra Parker Phelps writes? from Salisbury, 
Connecticut, of seeing large bales of ferns waiting for 
shipment at a little country station. ‘The ferns were 
Aspidium marginale, A. spinulosum and its varieties, 
and Polystichum acrostichoides. On none of the fronds 
did the spores seem to be ripe and some of the fronds 
were still so young that the tips were not fully devel- 
oped.” She asks, “‘How long does it take a fern to 
come from the spore to maturity? Surely no less than 
six years, probably much longer. But suppose the 
fronds were carefully collected, what of the scattering 
of spores for the production of new. ferns?” Mrs. 
Phelps also speaks of the fact that “in the year 1869, 
the Connecticut legislature passed an act prohibiting 
the gathering of the climbing fern, Lygodiuwm palmatum. 
Prior to that time, this beautiful fern had been exten- 
sively collected and sold for decorative purposes’’; but 
since the passing of the act it has recovered from its 
threatened extinction in the regions where it grows. 
Mr. Harold Goddard Rugg speaks‘ of the collecting 
of Polystichum acrostichoides, known to the collectors 
as the “dagger” fern, at Cavendish, Vermont, where 
“in one year three hundred and twenty-five thousand 
fronds were shipped to a Boston florist. This one 
florist, in the course of a year, uses one million fern 
fronds and one thousand pounds of ground pine or 
Lycopodium of various varieties.” Mr. Rugg speaks of 
the collecting of Dryopteris intermedia, known as “fancy” 
or “lace’’ fern, in southern Vermont, where collectors 
have picked the fern in some localities for twenty-five 
3A Plea for Fern Protection. Am. Fern Journal 2: 22-23. Jan., 1912. 
¥F Journal 
*Fern Protection Needed. Am. Fern 3: 93-94. July—Sept., 
1913. 
