OUR MISCELLANY. 



An article by W. R. Maxon, on the Tennessee stations for 

 the Hart's-tongue fern, was published in the Plant World for 

 September. 



Have readers noticed in plants of Asplenium cbeneum a faint 

 but delicious fragrance, or is this a peculiarity of the plants I have 

 found on Shelter Island ? The fragrance seems to come from the 

 base of the fronds or the rootstock. It is sufficiently strong now, 

 six months or more after the plants were collected, to slightly per- 

 fume one's hands when handling the dried specimens.— Margaret 

 SI os son. 



[A similar fragrance may occasionally be noticed in the 

 Ebony fern's relative, A. Trichomanes. The fact that it is not 

 always present in either may be explained upon the supposition 

 that it requires a sterile soil to bring it out, just as the sugar maple 

 yields the sweetest sap in the thin soil of a stony hillside, and not 

 in the rich ground in the valley. With plants, as with men, ad- 

 versity only serves to accentuate their good traits. — Ed. J 



I have in my wild bed in the garden a large bunch of Dry op- 

 ten's acrostic hoides which is rather freakish in its development. 

 In July or August I found on it two fronds of which every pinna? 

 was bi-lobed at the tip. The angle they made was about like that 

 in the familiar little spring flower called vulgarly " Dutchman's 

 Breeches" (Dicentra cucullarid). One of the fronds was also 

 forked at the tip. There were also a large number of fronds 

 which were curiously cut-lobed and incised. All of these peculiar 

 forms were from the newer plants on the, outside of the bunch. 

 The specimens were sent to the Chapter Herbarium.— E. C. 

 Anthony. 



The old negro women here are again offering the Climbing 

 fern {Lygodium palmatum) in the Central market, where from 

 now (November ist) until Christmas time it will be sold more or 

 less commonly for purposes of decoration. Local botanists know 

 it only from one small station, but it evidently occurs in abundance 

 elsewhere in the vicinity — just where we are not likely to discover, 

 for the venders are extremely chary of information. With them 

 it goes altogether by the name of "Alice's fern," a new one, per- 

 haps, to most fern students.— William R. Maxon, Washington, 

 D. C. [Can any one explain the derivation of this new common 

 name? — Ed.] 



