Dowell: Notes on Some Staten Island Ferns 165 



winter preceding that time a large adjacent piece of woodland 

 had been cleared, and this may have helped to kill the fern by 

 changing the conditions of moisture. 



The Bradley Avenue locality has been destroyed, but some 

 plants of Boott's fern may still be found there, struggling to 

 keep alive. The fern is still to be found in the other localities 

 previously reported. 



The so-called variety multiflora, which is a misnomer, is a 

 robust and thickly fruiting form, sometimes found on plants that 

 may produce ordinary fronds during a less favorable season or 

 under less favorable conditions. One robust plant growing ex- 

 posed to the sunlight but with plenty of moisture, at the base of 

 an old tree stump, had " multiflora '' fronds when first found, in 

 the Bradley Avenue locality, July 3, 1905 (38^8), but during the 

 next two seasons this same plant produced very ordinary fronds. 

 After the surrounding trees had been cut down, this plant was 

 taken home and transplanted, Sept. 12, 1907. During the suc- 

 ceeding three seasons that have passed since then, this plant has 

 appeared just like another plant of Boott's fern, which had been 

 transplanted July 3, 1905, from the same locality and taken for 

 an ordinary form, if it may be so called. 



The preceding fern, D. clintoniana X inter media, also produces 

 large and unusually heavily fruited fronds under favorable con- 

 ditions, and these fronds would also answer to the description of 

 Gilbert's variety multiflora. In this case, too, it is a heavily 

 fruited form, the fronds not necessarily larger than usual, though 

 often so. 



Dryopteris cristata X margin ALis Dav. Bot. Gaz. 19: 497. 



1894. 



This was found near Bulls Head Aug. 3, 1905, but no speci- 

 mens were taken on account of the absence of fertile fronds. 

 The following year a specimen was collected from this plant, 

 Aug. 18, 1906 (4^/4). Another new locality is the woodland 

 west of Egbertville, where the fern was found at two ditTerent 

 places; one along an old stone fence, June 9, 1906 (43/4), and 



