t 



EQUISETUM HYEMALE ' 



Summer does not reach us until June 21, although 

 Equisetum hyemale seems to think the solstice is on March 

 23 if we can judge from its fruit. Or perhaps Gray's 

 Manual and Our Native Ferns do not know how to name 

 the seasons when they say of this species " fruiting in 

 summer." I have always found the fertile knobs all 

 through the winter. In the early spring the spores are 

 discharged quite as early, if not earlier than those of 

 E. arvense which ''fruits in spring." The spores were 

 perfect, for I have already some young prothallia from 

 them (April 2) simply by sowing them on moist sand in 

 a covered tumbler. At my favorite colony of E. hyemale 

 the plant seems to have a great tendency to develop 

 slender branches usually near the top of the stems. 

 Many of these branches bear fertile spikes which are 

 rarely as large as peas. — C. E. Waters. (Reprinted 

 from Linnaean Fern Bulletin, No. 6, page 1.) 



PTERIDOGRAPHIA 



Botrychiums in Sand. — It has been held by those 

 who are most strenuous in insisting upon a special crea- 

 tion for American plants, that the fern we have for many 

 years called Botrychium mairicarice folium cannot be the 

 same as the European plant of the same name, because 

 the European plant is often found in sand along the 

 seashore. In a recent number of Torreya, C. B. Robin- 

 son reports finding this species in great abundance on 

 sand dunes on the north coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 " only ten yards above the reach of ordinary tides. 

 * * * In other terms, they were among the plants 

 which formed the first fringe of veegtation along the 

 coast." The usual habitat of this species is in rfloist, 

 rich woods, and this new habitat is but another reminder 



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