THE COMMON BRAKE AS A FOOD, 



Almost everyone knows the common brake on bracken, 

 (Pteridium aquilinum), found in woods throughout the 

 greater part of the world. Excepting possibly Australia, 

 it is in Western Oregon, Washington and British Colum- 

 bia that it reaches its highest development. In this 

 American area it is not only the most common fern, but 

 the largest as well. In the damp woods it grows up 

 through the evergreen shrubbery of salal, Oregon grape, 

 and huckleberry so densely as to make the woods almost 

 impassable. In the drier regions it reaches a height of 

 three to eight feet, and in hollows where the ground 

 is specially rich it reaches a height of fourteen feet. 

 Occasionally there are four or five to the square foot, 

 but when they are so dense as this, they interfere with 

 each other and do not reach the maximum growth. The 

 tallest are in woods where there is shade, for this makes 

 stems and leaf-stalks grow longer. In cleared fields, 

 however, they come up as densely as in woods, but rarely 

 reach a height of over six feet, usually two to four. In 

 new lands they are bad weeds, coming up year after 

 year. The farmer considers them a pest since they are 

 tough and hard to destroy ; and the horizontal, subterra- 

 nean stems, which are an inch or less in diameter, and 

 as much as ten feet long, are hard to cut. The large 

 amount of starch found in the stems produces numerous 

 shoots and is their source of supply during their rapid 

 growth. 



Like all common ferns (Filicales), the leaves of this 

 fern, when they appear above ground, are rolled up cir- 

 cinately, like a very much inverted capital J. The food 

 in the subterranean stems causes such rapid growth that 

 in the shade they reach a height of two to four feet 

 before they unroll the leafy portion to any considerable 



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