OUR NATIVE FERNS AND THEIR ALLIES. 



CHAPTER I. 

 HAUNTS AND HABITS OF FERNS. 



Our outward life requires them not, — 



Then wherefore had they birth ? 

 To minister dehght to man, 



To beautify the earth, 



— Mary Howitt. 



1 . General Characters. — Our native ferns comprise plants 

 varying in height from less than an inch to six or seven feet, or 

 even more. Some are stout and fleshy, others are delicate and 

 even filmy, but most are herbaceous, resembling ordinary 

 flowering plants in the texture of their foliage. While most 

 would be recognized as ferns by even a novice, a few differ so 

 widely from the ordinary typical forms that to an unskilled ob- 

 server they would scarcely be considered as bearing any resem- 

 blance to ferns whatever. The fronds of one of our Florida 

 species resemble narrow blades of grass, and the fertile spikes 

 ot another from New Jersey might be mistaken for a diminutive 

 species of sedge. A third from Alabama would, perhaps, be 

 called a moss by the inexperienced, while the " Hartford fern," 

 found from New England to Kentucky, has a climbing stem and 

 broad palmate leaves. 



When we add to these peculiar forms of our own country 

 those of foreign lands, and include the immense tree-ferns of 

 tropical regions, we find our early conception of a fern inade- 

 quate to cover this diversity of forms. Without attempting an 

 accurate definition of a fern, let it be regarded for present pur- 



