GENERA AND SPECIES. 129 
PrarTe L: 
LYGODIUM PALMATUM. Swartz. 
CLIMBING FERN. 
The common name of this fern is very appropriate. It 
has a slender, twining stalk, bearing at intervals of a couple 
of inches alternate short branches; these are twice-forked, 
each subdivision bearing a palmate frondlet. The smaller 
fertile frondlets form a compound terminal panicle. The 
root-stock is creeping, and somewhat similar to those al- 
ready described in many other ferns. 
This is one of the rarest of our Kentucky ferns, and, of 
late years, has only been found within the limits of the 
State in a few localities. It had been previously given as 
indigenous to the State, in the works of Gray, Wood, and 
other botanists, without specifying localities, probably on 
the authority of Dr. Short, though I have not found it in 
the catalogues of either Short or Riddell. During the 
summer of 1876 Mrs. L. P. Yandell, of Louisville, and 
Miss G. H. Rule, of Philadelphia, discovered it at Rock- 
castle Springs, near London, Laurel County; and on a re- 
cent excursion (March, 1878,) to Livingston, Rockcastle 
County, I found it growing in great luxuriance, covering 
acres of ground on the moist declivity of the range of 
hills extending from Livingston to Pine Hill. The masses 
of twining fronds matted together and interlaced in a thou- 
sand directions, reminded me of clusters of dodder. Prof. 
Crandall, of the Kentucky Geological Survey, reports the 
Climbing Fern on the Cumberland table-lands near Cross- 
ville, Tenn.; it is found in the Carolinas (Nuttail), in the 
western part of Virginia, on the borders of Kentucky and 
Tennessee (Michaux), and in Florida (Chapman). 
