EDITORIAL. 



A long time ago, John Williamson wrote of Cys- 

 CYSTOPTERIS topteris fragilis as follows: "This is one of the 

 fragilis earliest of our native ferns to welcome the coming 



spring. It is a fragile, delicate little plant, send- 

 ing up its scroll-like fronds before the snow has scarcely left the 

 ground." If this acute observer had asserted that this species is 

 earliest of all to develop mature fronds, he still would have been 

 within the bounds of truth. Observations made by readers of 

 The Fern Bulletin during the past spring show this fern to be 

 far ahead of any other. One enthusiastic fern-hunter in Con- 

 necticut sent us fronds eight inches high on the 19th of April, and 

 wrote that in the same locality the trailing arbutus lacked nearly 

 two weeks of flowering. If asked to name, off hand, the first 

 fern to develop mature fronds, it is likely that few would have 

 selected this frail species. 



* 



The search for the first expanded frond discovered 

 EARLY FRUITING several interesting facts regarding the species 

 FRONDS which are earliest to fruit. It is commonly as- 



sumed that the cinnamon fern produces the first 

 ripe spores, but this is a mistake, at least so far as it applies to 

 the vicinity of New York. Here Cystopteris again bears off the 

 palm. The cinnamon fern is not even a good second, for its rela- 

 tive, Osmunda Claytoniana, has shed many of its spores before 

 the spikes of the other have assumed a cinnamon tinge. Osmun- 

 da regalis comes fourth on the list and it is a close race between 

 the Christmas fern and Botryckzum Virginianum for the next 

 place, with the slight odds in favor of the former. After that, 

 the procession passes into June with fruiting fronds so abundant 

 that it is difficult to determine the succession further. 



We are inclined to hold that a "common" name 

 COMMON should be common somewhere, but this view of 



NAMES the case seems never to have been entertained by 



the present generation of nomenclature makers 

 who vainly imagine that to give the plant the English equivalent 

 of its scientific name is all that is necessary. But except in rare 

 cases, common names originate in the fancies or from the obser- 

 vations of the common people, and thus follow no set rules. No 



