THE FERN BULLETIN 



23 



it did not grow in this State, but a few weeks later I 

 found a fine specimen by the roadside a few miles away 

 and still later found many vigorous clumps in an old 

 pasture beside an old wall and around piles of stone. 

 In spite of its resemblence to the cinnamon fern there 

 are many little points of difference and when they are 

 in fruit there is no mistaking them. Generally speak- 

 ing it is a little more slender and delicate in appearance 

 than the cinnamon fern. The crosiers are not so wool- 

 ly and they lack the tiny tuft at the base of the pinnules 

 but the habit of growth is similar in both species. The 

 fertile fronds are taller than the sterile and both are 

 oblong lanceolate in shape with pinnatified, blunt-lobed 

 pinnae. The spore bearing organs are near the middle 

 of the frond and are very like the fruiting pinnae of the 

 cinnamon fern, but seem such an out of place "inter- 

 ruption" of the green frond that they are often taken 

 for dwarfed and blighted pinnae rather than the rea- 

 son for being of the fern. The fertile part early with- 

 ers and falls leaving a bare space on the rachis which 

 emphasizes the common name. 



The flowering fern (Osmunda regalis) — for what- 

 ever the hair-splitting among botanists the beauty of 

 our fern makes it truly royal — is common both in 

 Europe and America, though it is so unlike most of 

 our ferns in appearance that I fancy many pass it un- 

 thinkingly. The first one that I saw was a stunted 

 specimen growing beside a house a forlorn plant with 

 no suggestion of royal lineage. But I learned the 

 look of it and when later I saw beside the road a lusty 

 plant six feet or more in height and nearly as much in 

 diameter, I knew it at once, though the abundant sup- 

 ply of water had so greatly increased its size. The 

 large twice pinnate fronds are a beautiful cool, green 



