“Tt is very pleasant and cheerful nowadays, when the brown and 
withered leaves strew the ground and almost every plant is fallen, to 
come upon a patch of Polypody . . . . on some rocky hillside in the 
woods, where in the midst of dry and rustling leaves, defying frost, it 
stands so freshly green and full of life. My thoughts are with the 
polypody a long time after my body has passed. .. . The forest 
floor is covered with a thick coat of moist brown leaves, but what is 
that perennial and springlike verdure that clothes the rocks, of small 
green plumes pointing various ways. It is the cheerful community of 
the polypody. It survives at least as the type of vegetation to remind 
us of the spring that shall not fail—THOREAU. 
