20 ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS.—SENSITIVE FERN. 
produced, and finally, at the end of the season’s growth, the 
young, circinately arranged leaves which are to push out again 
into barren fronds on the advent of spring. 
Modern botanists have been puzzled to account for its name 
sensibilis, or sensitive fern. Linnzeus simply found it in use when 
he established the binomial system, and retained what he found. 
Thomas Moore, an authority on ferns, says it “has no other claim 
to this name beyond the fact of its rapidly withering when cut.” 
Mr. Robinson in his “Ferns of Essex Co., Mass.,” has a similar 
idea, only that the cutting is by frost. He has noted, as the 
writer of this has, that the slightest white frost injures the fronds; 
but, after all, frost has this effect on many other of our hardy ferns, 
and one cannot but wonder why this one more than others should 
have be en singled out as especially “sensitive” on that account. 
Rafinesque, in his “ Medical Flora,” published in 1828, at page 
67, says that the fronds of Oxoclea sensibilis are “sensible to a 
harsh grasp,” which “coils them when plucked;” but this seems 
to be rather a translation of what Linnzus wrote of it than to 
be an cbservation of his own. How far coiling may have sug- 
gested its generic name, Ovoclea, is not clear. The text-books tell 
us it is “from ovos, a vessel, and lero, to enclose,” but no one 
can exactly see the application. One tells us it is “an ancient 
name of Dioscorides,” but the old Greek writer’s plant seems to 
have had something in connection with the ass, and to have been 
perhaps an Azchusa or some Loraginaccous plant. At any rate, 
whatever may have been the original meaning or derivation of 
the mame, we can only know that our plant had no relation 
whatever to anything the Greeks or Romans had in their mind. 
EXPLANATIONS OF THE PLATE.—1. Rhizome. 2. Barren frond. 3. Fertile frond. 4. Fibrous 
roots from the rhizome. 5. Bases of the barren fronds. 6, Base of the fertile frond. 7. 
Abortive fronds or scales. 
