WHEN AND WHERE TO FIND FERNS 



frun now, with its delicate, tendril-like fruit, climb- 

 ing three or four feet over the asters, golden-rod, 

 etc., on the edge of the swamp." 



In moist places now we find the triangular much 

 dissected leaf and branching fruit-cluster of the 

 Ternate Grape Fern. 



When October sets in, many of the ferns take 

 their color- note from the surroundings. Vying 

 with the maples along the roadside the Osmundas 

 wear deep orange. Many of the fronds of the Dick- 

 sonia are bleached almost white, while others look 

 fresh and green despite their delicate texture. On 

 October 4th Thoreau writes of this plant : 



" How interesting now, by wall-sides and on open 

 springy hill-sides, the large straggling tufts of the 

 Dicksonia fern above the leaf-strewn green sward, 

 the cold, fall-green sward ! They are unusually pre- 

 served about the Corner Spring, considering the 

 earliness of this year. Long, handsome, lanceolate 

 green fronds pointing in every direction, recurved 

 and full of fruit, intermixed with yellowish and sere 

 brown and shrivelled ones, the whole clump per- 

 chance strewn with fallen and withered maple leaves, 

 and overtopped by now withered and unnoticed os- 

 mundas. Their lingering greenness is so much the 

 more noticeable now that the leaves generally have 

 changed. They affect us as if they were evergreen, 

 such persistent life and greenness in the midst of 

 decay. No matter how much they are strewn with 

 withered leaves, moist and green they spire above 

 them, not fearing the frosts, fragile as they are. 



25 



