A Crested Fern Used in Landscape Planting 
F. G. FLOYD 
Several years ago a dwarf crested fern was submitted 
to me for identification. The material was quite meager 
and the specimens were not well made and, on account 
of having been collected late in the season, the sori 
and indusia were not particularly well preserved. On 
account of the poor material I was unable to satisfactorily 
establish the identity of the species at the time, but 
it seemed to be a form of Asplenium Filiz-femina (L.) 
Bernh. The plant was collected at West Rock Park, 
New Haven, Conn., and was reported as abundant. 
Nearly all of our native ferns are known to produce 
crested forms occasionally, but with the exception of 
certain species that are provided with stoloniferous 
running rootstocks, these crested forms are found as 
isolated single plants and not in colonies nor in any 
abundance over considerable areas. In 1898 I dis- 
covered Dicksonia punctilobula (Michx.) Gray! with 
forked and crested fronds in the Blue Hills, Milton, 
Mass., and in 1904 the late Mr. George E. Davenport 
and myself visited the station at Sudbury, Mass., and 
collected a crested form of Aspidium Thelypteris (L.) 
Sw.? These two species are of the stoloniferous type. 
At each of these stations the fern had spread by means 
of the creeping rootstock until it occupied an area of 
at least one hundred square feet almost to the exclusion 
of the normal form. In rambling over New England 
in search of flowers and ferns I have found many crested 
or otherwise abnormally divided forms of ferns, but in 
all my experience, extending over a period of more than 
twenty years, except at the two above-mentioned sta- 
tions at Milton and Sudbury, I have never found at 
1 Forma cristata (Maxon) Clute. Fern Bull. 7: 63; Rhodora. 2: 220. 
* Forma Pufferae (A. A. Eaton) Robinson. Fern Bull. 10: 78. 
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