120 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
crowded by their overhanging fronds, rose to the occa- 
sion, lengthened its stipes, and lifted its triangular 
fronds above the shoulders of its jostling neighbors. 
The young fronds began to grow late in April or early 
in May, most of the earliest ones being sterile, and im 
some years fertile fronds appeared as late as August. 
The light brown to brown spore cases begin to ripen 
about or soon after the middle of July and ripe sporangia 
may be found on some fronds as late as September. 
The earliest of the ferns in my garden is the fragile 
bladder fern. The young fronds appear during the 
first days of April; and one of my notes of March 27, 
1913, states that the crosiers were coming at that time, 
their green heads beginning to uncoil. In 1915 they 
began to grow on April 5, but grew very slowly till 
April 10, when a warm shower, raining at intervals 
during the night, produced a growth of a full inch till 
the next morning. Some of the fronds are almost fully 
grown by the end of April. The first fronds are ge” 
erally fertile and sterile and fertile fronds continue © 
appear during June and July. The two plants, brought 
from a wet place among stones and set in my fern be 
m July, 1912, have developed into two-beautiful masses 
of ferns. The black or black-brown sporangia ripen 
the earliest fronds by the close of May. 
In September, 1910, I brought the rootstocks of tw 
bulb-bearing bladder ferns from a station thirty miles 
away, the nearest one known, placed them in soil in 4 
box dug into the ground for the winter, and plant 
them in my fern bed in May, 1911. They. thrived 
splendidly, sending up numbers of their “beautiful 
slender fronds, and so many young ferns are 0 
from the fallen bulblets as actually to become @ W 
in the fern bed, forming a dense stand and crowding © 
almost, everything else. They almost succeeded, ™ 
fact, in choking a spinulose shield fern; and 1 find 
