— io6— 



become naturalized on Staten Island, New York. To this meagre 

 list, it is with much pleasure that I add another species in the 

 shape of the Japanese climbing fern (Lygodium Japonicum). 

 This Mrs. A. P. Taylor has sent to me from Thomasville, Georgia, 

 where she finds it in profusion along the sides of a deep ditch. 

 The station is not far from a greenhouse from whence the plants 

 doubtless came in the first place, but all indications point to a 

 further spread of this pretty and interesting species. 



The Forms of the Spinulose Wood Fern— It is well- 

 known to fern students that much more attention has been paid 

 to the forms of ferns on the other side of the Atlantic than on 

 this. Since the same species are often common to both localities, 

 it is but natural that the early students of American ferns should 

 pay rather more attention to the mere forms of species common 

 to Great Britain and America than their systematic importance 

 warrants. This is especially true of the variable Nephrodium 

 spinulosum whose variety intermedium, I am convinced, is 

 scarcely more than an ecological form. In this view I am glad 

 to be borne out by Mr. A. B. Klugh, who has recently examined 

 nearly 500 Canadian specimens and come to the same conclusion. 

 Mr. Klugh writes : "In number of glands on the indusium, in 

 color of scales on the stipe, in shape and cutting of the frond 

 and in degree of obliquity of the pinnae, we have a perfect 

 gradation from true spinulosum to typical intermedium. Our 

 commonest form has the indusium glandular and the scales of 

 the stipe pale brown without a dark centre." In a series of fronds 

 examined there seemed to be no corelation between the color of 

 the scales and the glands on the indusium, there being fronds 

 with light scales and no glands, others with dark centered scales 

 and many glands, and still others the exact opposites of these. 

 Intermedium may be distinguished as a form, but it is certainly 

 far less distinct than such plants as Nephrodinm cristatum 

 Clintonianum or Pteris aquilina pseudocaudata and would prob- 

 ably never have appeared in our lists but for the fact that much 

 has been made of the forms of this species in other lands. 



Elevation and Lycopodium seeago. — Some time ago I noted 

 in this series, that a party of botanists on a visit to Mt. Ktaadn 

 had found Lycopodium selago grading into L. lucidulum as they 



