BOTRYCHIUMS IN AN ODD PLACE. 



BEFORE making a systematic study of ferns the Botry- 

 chiums were entirely unknown to me, I never having 

 gathered them with other strange plants or even noticed 

 their peculiar growth. Since making their acquaintance, how- 

 ever, they have always shown themselves whenever present and I 

 have been able to distinguish them at a distance even when 

 among other thickly growing plants. About Boston the typical 

 Botrychium ternatum is quite rare, only a few specimens having 

 been found in rich woods. The variety obliquum is, however, 

 very plentiful in moist sunny pastures where it is associated with 

 var. intermedium and var. dissectum. In each of two such places 

 I have, in early September, collected over fifty specimens, their 

 golden fruit being conspicuous among the grass and the purple 

 gerardia, polygala, and running blackberry vines which frequented 

 the same spots. Botrychium ternatum, varieties obliquum and 

 dissectum, we often find near the paths under bushes in dark 

 woods. In such places only a few specimens are fourd and these 

 are seldom fruited. 



During the first w r eek of last August while in the Yellowstone 

 National Park, I was astonished at finding two plants of Botry- 

 chium in a suprising location. At an altitude of about 7,500 feet 

 is the mud geyser region. Here the mud- volcano belches forth, 

 with disagreeable sounds, hot mud and steam, which having 

 reached the plants in the vicinity has deposited upon their foliage 

 a thin coating of the ejected matter. Within thirty feet of this 

 crater are several boiling springs and it was on the edge of one of 

 these, on a soil consisting in a great part of geyser formation and 

 almost devoid of vegetation that 1 found in company with some 

 little sedges, and, if I remember rightly, pipewort, that I found 

 these Botrychiums. A few feet away a few large plants 

 of a rugged species of the orchid spiranthes lent their erect 

 white forms to the weird scene. There was considerable 

 heat in this place as it was exposed to the sun and the ground 

 was hot, too, from the internal heat which here and there manifests 

 itself by cracking the surface and sending out steam and bub- 

 bles of hot water. Although growing in a situation unlike that 

 in which we find this genus, these two plants flourished and seemed 

 to be "to the manor born." The specimen which I have pre- 

 served grew to the height of seven inches. The fertile segment 



