HAY-SCENTED FERN. 



The fronds are singularly feathery and graceful in their 

 appearance. They are rarely less than a foot long, and may 

 attain a length of over three feet. They are green, delicately 

 herbaceous, withering very quickly when plucked, but often 

 bleaching very prettily in the autumn. The upper surface is 

 nearly smooth, but the under-surface is minutely glandular- 

 puberulent, and sometimes finely hairy. In drying they give 

 out a rather pleasant hay-like odor, though by no means so 

 fragrant as two or three of the wood-ferns. They are ovate- 

 lanceolate in outline, tapering very gradually from just above 

 the rather broad base to a long and slender apex. 



The pinnae repeat in miniature the outline of the frond. 

 In all but the lower pinnae of the very largest fronds the 

 secondary rachises are narrowly wing-margined by the decur- 

 rent bases of the adnate segments or pinnules. These seg- 

 ments are oblong-ovate, mostly obtuse, pinnatifid often rather 

 more than half way to the midvein into oblong toothed lobes. 

 The largest pinnae are from three to six inches long; the 

 pinnules from half an inch to an inch long; the lobes 

 from one to three lines long, and the teeth about the fourth 

 part of a line. The veins and veinlets are all free; the latter 

 so branched that a veinlet runs to every one of the minute 

 lobules or teeth. 



A fertile frond, as is very common in ferns, is fertile 

 only in its upper half, the lower pinnae being usually sterile. 

 The fruit-dots are very minute, and are placed on the lowest 

 tooth on the upper side of the lobes of the segments. Com- 



