THE CURLY GRASS AND THE CLIMBING FERN. 281 
branches, each of which is forked with a pair of frondlets 
at the end. These are about semi- 
circular in outline, and cut halfway or 
more toward the base into from five to 
seven ovate or oblong leaflets. The 
basal ones are eared on the lower side 
making each frondlet somewhat heart- 
shaped at base. In fertile fronds, the 
frondlets toward the apex are suddenly 
reduced to a panicle of many short nar- 
row segments, but with a general re- 
semblance in their form to the sterile 
ones. On the underside of these segments, there is a 
double row of alternating, scale-like indusia each covering 
an egg-shaped sporecase. After the spores are ripe, the 
fertile portion dies, but the sterile frondlets remain 
green through the winter and until the young crosiers 
begin to develop in spring. 
In autumn the fronds are offered for sale for decorative 
purposes in many of our southern and eastern cities, and 
the great demand for it has nearly caused its extinction in 
some sections. In Connecticut the legislature once 
passed a law imposing a penalty upon any person who 
should uproot or carry away from the land of another, 
specimens of this fern. This is: probably the only fern 
thus distinguished. 
This species is also called creeping fern, snake-tongue 
fern, Hartford fern and Windsor fern, the last two 
names referring to localities where it was once common. 
It ranges from Massachusetts to Florida, mostly near the 
coast, and has also been found in Kentucky and Ten- 
nessee, but not in the intervening territory. It grows in 
low thickets and on the banks of streams, twining over 
A FRUITING PINNA, 
