— 5— 



Miss M. Slosson and the writer have found stations for Dryopteris 

 cristataxmarginalis, and if we can find Dryopteris simulata we 

 shall be about satisfied. As it is, we have forty-seven species and 

 varieties of ferns in the State, as many as the other five New 

 England States together. To this might be added twelve more 

 for Botrychium and Ophioglossum. 

 Rutland, Vt. 



DRYOPTERIS CRIST ATA X MARGINALIS. 



NEAR the central part of Vermont the Green Mountains and 

 a range locally known as the Western Hills run parallel for 

 some little distance. The country between is very hilly. 

 To the east the valley dips, and extending for perhaps half a mile 

 between densely wooded hills rising abruptly on either side, forms 

 a woodland swamp. The trees in the swamp are mostly tama- 

 racks, while under foot beds of sphagnum, saturated with water 

 from the underlying bog, make the swamp almost impassable. 

 There, also, usually half imbedded in some crumbling log, grows 

 Dryopteris cristata x marginalis. At first sight this fern suggests 

 cristata ; looking more closely, one sees a difference. The more 

 heavily fruited of the fronds have something of the erectness and 

 rigidity of cristata, but the pinnae of many of the fronds droop a 

 little with a slight upward curve, the color of the fronds is more 

 blue, the growth of the rootstock is terminal and the fronds form 

 a circle around the curled-up buds. In cristata the growth of the 

 rootstock is lateral and the buds push out sideways beyond the 

 fronds. 



I find the rootstock often producing buds in the axils of the 

 old stipe bases. These buds develop into young plants, and as 

 each has its central terminal crown, which grows straight upward, 

 the resulting effect is a crowded cluster of plants of all sizes with 

 their rootstocks firmly welded together. The fronds of all the 

 young plants of this fern vary from triangular to ovate in outline, 

 but the fronds of the young plants derived from axillary buds of 

 rootstocks seem older from the beginning, than the fronds of 

 young plants springing directly from spores; they have more 

 often the long, acuminate pinnae that in the latter are seldom seen 

 until a much later period. The fronds of these offsets also some- 

 times develop their lower pair of pinnae much at the expense of 

 the rest of the frond. This is not due to any injury, so fa,r as. I 

 can see. 



