THE CLIMBING FERN IN SPRING. 



By C. F. Saunders. 



WHEN in the sunny swamplands the white birches are in 

 tassel, and the red maples, heavy with ruddy fruit, blaze 

 like flames of fire ; when the mats of pyxie that closely 

 carpet the sand in damp pine barrens are starred with the last 

 pale blooms of the season, and the sundew, encouraged by the 

 hum of the early gnats, is busily preparing new year's traps in the 

 bosom of the old year's brown remains, 

 to the piping of the peepers in the marsh ; 

 when the woolly fiddleheads of the cin- 

 namon fern are uncoiling a foot above the 

 earth, and the claws of the bracken's 

 young fronds are clinched in air like the 

 fists of a drowsy man stretching himself 

 out of a sound sleep — in short, about the 

 last of April, the tiny crosiers of the 

 Climbing fern {Lygodhmi palmatuni) 

 are shyly pushing their round heads up 

 through the sand and moss in thickets 

 along the banks of swift flowing, resin- 

 ous streams in the New Jersey pines. At 

 that season of the year, the collector, if 

 he be not already familiar with the habits 

 of the plant, will probably be surprised 

 to find that the fronds of the previous 

 year have persisted through the winter. 

 Indeed, of all our so-called evergreen 

 ferns, the fronds of none seem to come 

 out of the battle with snow and ice in 

 better order than do those of this most 

 delicate looking species and its diminu- 

 tive cousin, Schizea fiusilla. Specimens 

 of the Lygodium collected by the present 

 writer on March 31, 1899 (after a winter 

 of exceptional severity for this latitude, 

 during which the mercury on several 

 consecutive days sank below zero), were 

 as fresh and lively in color as they had 

 been the preceding autumn, except that the fertile ends were now 



Croziers about 3 weeks 

 old. 



