THE OSMUNDAS, 27 
When full grown, the sterile fronds are often six feet 
high with stipes a foot long, and spread out in circular 
crowns like shuttlecocks or great green vases. They are 
lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate in out- 
line with twenty or more pairs of nearly 
opposite, lanceolate pinnae cut nearly 
to the rachis into numerous oblong, 
rounded lobes. The fertile fronds are 
totally unlike them; in fact, in this 
species the difference between the two 
is probably greater than in any other 
American fern excepting, perhaps, the 
little curly grass. They are stiff, club 
like and cinnamon-coloured and are 4 FRUITING PINNA. 
very noticeable in the greening swamp- 
lands of late spring. An examination of one of the woolly 
pinnz composing these clubs will discover the counter- 
parts of the ordinary green pinnz of the sterile frond 
here reduced in area and covered with sporangia. 
The fertile fronds are at first bright green. About the 
last week in May, just as they begin to assume the 
familiar brown hue, the spores are shed in myriads, 
the slightest touch sufficing to shake down a sage-green 
cloud. At this stage a pinnule presents a beautiful sight 
under a simple lens. The multitudes of tiny globes vary 
in colour from the deep green of the unopened spheres to 
the sulphur-yellow or rich brown of older empty ones, 
Many will be found partly open, disclosing the spores 
within. Most species have brownish spores, but those of 
the Osmundas are of a beautiful shade of green, due to 
the amount of chlorophyll they contain. Perhaps because 
of this rather perishable chlorophyll, they must germinate 
within a few days after they are shed or they will be 
