162 ASPIDIUM MUNITUM.—CHAMISSO’S SHIELD-FERN, 
with the rhizome is so abundantly covered with broad, chaffy 
scales, as to look like the feathered head of a bird. Sometimes 
these chaffy scales extend a long way up the stipe or stem of 
the frond, occasionally reaching the foliaceous portion. It is, 
however, variable in tnese and other respects in common with 
most ferns. Judging by numerous specimens in the Academy 
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, the species is more than 
usually variable. Ten years after it was named by Kaulfuss, it 
was collected by Nuttall on Wyeth’s expedition of 1834, and the 
specimens then obtained are so different from the original spe- 
cies, as to appear quite distinct, and are labelled in Nuttall’s 
handwriting “Aspidium Columbianum,” which is erased and 
under-written “Aspidium Oreganum,” as it was uncertain whether 
or not to make it a distinct species. And the specimens vary very 
much in the size of the plants according to location. Palmer’s 
from Gadalupe Island has a frond of over two and a half feet, with 
a stipe of more than a foot in length. A small and very narrow 
form is marked in Nuttall’s collection “Aspidium Willamettense, 
from the Rocks of the Willamette.” Fronds collected by Prof. 
Bolander from Oakland, California, are only about two feet in 
length in all, the stipe not being much over eight inches. The 
specimens collected by Bigelow in California, on the Whipple 
exploring expedition, are not more than six inches long, while 
others from Dr. Gibbon are about the size we have chosen for 
our illustration. Our specimen, however, Fig. 1, as may be seen 
by there being only a very small portion of the frond in fruit, is a 
comparatively young one, for in mature plants fully one-half of 
the frond may be fertile, just as we find under similar conditions 
the eastern Aspidium acrostichoides, 
As in the case of the Christmas-Shield Fern of the East, the 
Western collector could not say he had to wait 
“ Till the spring blossomed again, 
Till the birch first unfolded its leaves on the shore 
And the robin first warbled its strain, 
as in the language of the poet Percival he would have to say 
