278 THE CURLY GRASS AND THE CLIMBING FERN. 
plant of the fresh water swamps and bogs. When full 
grown it seldom attains a height of six inches and the 
slender fronds present so little surface for the eye to 
rest upon that it is one of the most difficult of our ferns 
to distinguish from its surroundings. It is only in mid- 
summer or later, when the spikes show a glint of brown, 
or in a mild winter when the absence of vegetation 
renders the sterile fronds conspicuous, that one can 
search for the plant with much hope of finding it. Even 
then one must often get down on hands and knees to 
see it. 
The sterile fronds are an inch or more long and scarcely 
wider than pencil marks. They are twisted or half coiled 
in loose open spirals and spread about as if trying to lay 
hold upon the vegetation near. In July the fertile 
fronds push up on thread-like stems. They are quite as 
inconspicuous and have no greater likeness to fern leaves 
than have the sterile ones. At the top of the stipe are 
four or more pairs of finger-like pinnz enclosing the 
sporangia. The lowest pair are longest and all are set 
closely together in a little brown spike that resembles 
a tiny fist. The fruiting fronds remain on the plant 
during the winter and occasionally until the middle of 
the following year. Possibly they do not release their 
spores until spring. 
Sometime afterthe curly grass was discovered in New 
Jersey, a few plants were found in Nova Scotia by Mrs. 
E. G. Britton and still later, in 1896, specimens were col- 
lected in Newfoundland by Rev. Arthur Waghorne. 
This is not the first record for Newfoundland, however. 
In the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, are specimens col- 
lected long ago by De la Pylaie and labelled Newfound- 
land, but until the fern was rediscovered there, they were 
