■^RDIIP I STERILE AND hERTlLE FRONDS TOTALLY UNLIKE; 

 viKUUr FERTILE FRONDS NO T LEAF-LIKE IN APPEARANCE 



article by Mr. C. F. Saunders on Schizcea pusilla at 

 home: 



" S. pusilla was first collected early in this century 

 at Quaker Bridge, N. J., about thirty-five miles east 

 of Philadelphia. The spot is a desolate-looking 

 place in the wildest of the 'pine barrens,' where a 

 branch of the Atsion River flows through marshy 

 lowlands and cedar swamps. Here, amid sedge- 

 grasses, mosses, Lycopodiums, Droseras, and wild 

 cranberry vines, the little treasure has been col- 

 lected ; but, though I have hunted for it more than 

 once, my eyes have never been sharp enough to 

 detect its fronds in that locality. In October of 

 last year, however, a friend guided me to another 

 place in New Jersey where he knew it to be grow- 

 ing, and there we found it. It was a small open 

 spot in the pine barrens, low and damp. In the 

 white sand grew patches of low grasses, mosses, 

 Lycopodium Carolinianum, L. inundatum, and 

 Pyxidanthera barbulata, besides several smaller 

 ericaceous plants and some larger shrubs, such as 

 scrub-oaks, sumacs, etc. Close by was a little 

 stream, and just beyond that a bog. Although we 

 knew that the Schizaea grew within a few feet of 

 the path in which we stood, it required the closest 

 sort of a search, with eyes at the level of our knees, 

 before a specimen was detected. The sterile fronds 

 (curled like corkscrews) grew in little tufts, and 

 were more readily visible than the fertile spikes, 

 which were less numerous, and, together with the 



slender stipes, were of a brown color, hardly dis- 



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