WOODSIA ILVENSIS. 



By C. F. Saunders. 



WOODSIA ILVENSIS, that is. the Elba Woodsia, is a na- 

 tive of Arctic regions and mountainous parts of the tem- 

 perate zone in Asia, Europe and America In the United 

 States its most southern recorded limit is North Carolina. The 

 present writer's acquaintance with it is confined to the mountains 

 of eastern Pennsylvania, where, without being rare, it is never- 

 theless among the less common plants. It is one of the few ferns 

 that lend the grace of their presence to exposed rocks, and so do 

 what they can to make pleasant the waste places of the earth. At 

 Lehigh Gap, Penna, where the Lehigh river cuts its way through 

 the wall of the Blue Mountains, this Woodsia grows in the open 

 sunlight on rocks high up on the side of an almost perpendicular 

 ascent facing the river. Twenty miles away it may again be 

 found, in the rocky clefts of a shaded hillside along McMichael's 

 Creek. In the latter locality, perhaps because protected from the 

 direct rays of the sun, it grows more luxuriantly, and in point of 

 graceful beauty challenges comparison with any member of its 

 lovely order. 



In Pennsylvania our fern is usually from four- to six inches in 

 height, and grows in tufts either on the face or top or in the cre- 

 vices of the rocks. .The dead fronds break off at (a joint in the 

 stipe a half an inch or so above the ground, leaving the lower 

 portion of the stalks stiffly standing, and the living fronds are 

 very frequently found surrounded by small plantations of such 

 stubble. This joint ( which is plainly discernible under a pocket 

 lens) is a characteristic of several species of this genus and serves 

 as a ready and sure means of distinguishing our plant from Chei- 

 larthes lanosa, which bears a considerable resemblance to it and 

 grows in similar situations. 



The fronds of W. Ilvensis are thickly clothed on the back with 

 hairs and bristly chaff. These in the young plants are whitish, 

 and give to the whole back of the frond a silvery or frosted ap- 

 pearance, which, however, changes upon maturity to a brownish- 

 red — a color possessed also by the chaffy stipe and rachis. Al- 

 though it may seem on first acquaintance somewhat stiff and even 

 coarse of habit, W. Ilvensis is one of the most interesting of our 

 native ferns, and the unpretentious but sturdy, unwavering fight 

 of the furry little plant with sun and frost will speedily win for it, 

 I think, a place in the heart of any who will give it due attention. 



