66 



THE FERN BULLETIN 



and the open space around them, was a dense carpet 

 of peat moss, pierced as it were by the stalks of the 

 fronds. Three species of the moss rewarded the visit, 

 the everywhere common Sphagnum cymbifolium, the 

 less common but often abundant S.recurvum. Beauv. 

 or 6\ intermedium. Hoff. of Lesquereux and James 

 Manual, and S. Embricatum, Russ or the 5\ Austini, 

 Nullio of the Manual. The last was especially wel- 

 come as it was the first time I had met w'lth a species 

 that has papillae or rudimentary fibrils on the inner 

 walls of the hyaline cells of the leaves, which gives 

 them a pectinate appearance, the Rammfasern, or 

 comb-fibrils, of the German bryologists. The second 

 species belongs to a group of peat-mosses that particu- 

 larly delights in very wet localities, for, though all 

 sphagna are hygrophytic, they show varying shades 

 of adaptation to water or moisture, and it was most in 

 evidence where the Woodwardia was most luxuriant, 

 the wettest parts of the swamp. I have always found 

 this fern in a peaty substratum, so that the association 

 with sphagnum is a very natural one, and is almost 

 without exception verified in the swamps which plen- 

 tifully intersperse the dune region at the head of Lake 

 Michigan, in several of which this fern grows, and 

 where species of Sphagnum, especially of the cuspidate 

 group, to which »S\ rcturrum belongs, are alike abun- 

 dant. Many of the labels in my moss-herbarium have 

 written upon them, "Grows with Woodwardia" thus 

 definitely recording the association. And the coupling 

 is true not only of the swamps of the dune region in 

 Indiana and others beyond it, but of the sphagnous 

 swamps of tamarack and White Pine in Lake Coun- 

 ty, Illinois, where the fern also occurs. 



