THE OAK AND BEECH FERNS. 



BY ADELLA PRESCOTT. 



These ferns are among the many whose proper 

 names are a subject of dispute, for while the fruit dots 

 of the species are like the polypodies in that they have 

 no indusion yet they differ in some important respects. 

 One difference is in the position of the fruit dots which 

 in the polypodiums are on the ends of the veins while 

 in the phegoterids they are on the backs; and another 

 and perhaps more important difference is that the stipes 

 are not jointed to the rootstock as they are in the 

 Polypodiums. But these questions do not affect the 

 beauty of the ferns which is the most important thing 

 from an amateur's point of view so we will call them 

 Phegopteris and let those who think otherwise prove 

 it if they want to and can. 



I had read of the daintiness and beauty of the oak 

 fern but had never seen it until one day when walking 

 beside a road leading through a wooded swamp I un- 

 expectedly found a broad carpet of the exquisite things 

 stretching before my feet. There were hundreds of 

 them and every frond seemed to be perfect and if the 

 day had brought me nothing else (which it did) it 

 would linger long in my memory. 



The oak fern (Phegopteris dryopteris) is a small 

 fern with a spreading horizontal blade suggesting a 

 miniature brake. It has a slender creeping rootstock 

 and the blade is. divided into three nearlv equal parts 

 each of which is pinnate with deenly lobed pinnules. 

 The stipe is very slender and the blade is a brilliant 

 yellow green — "the greenest thing- in nature" as one 

 writer nuts it. The sori are not conspicuous and are 

 borne near the margin of the pinnules. 



The oak fern is found in the Old World as well as in 



