8 
FERNS OF THE WEST 
we lay it aside and complacently rest from our labors? If we visit a 
mining camp for the first time, and learn that there is a smelter near, 
we would be strange people if we did not go through it, and not 
rest till we understood the purpose and workings of the complicated 
machinery in every detail. So with plants; after our introduction to 
them (for learning a name is nothing more), we should never cease to 
study their habits, their modes of growth, and the uses of every organ in 
root, stem and leaf. Many books have been written on ferns, and many 
men have spent their lives in research upon them, but the field is hardly 
opened, much less explored. Since the field is practically inexhaustible, 
yields such rich returns, and its materials lie at every door, let us look 
about us with more care, and try to discover and comprehend the subtle 
forces which are busy day and night rearing up these beautiful plant 
structures which have been the delight of the world from the earliest 
ages. 
ORDER I.-OPHIOGLOSSACEii. 
Fern-like plants. Fronds not rolled up in the young state ; fruit- 
bearing portion rising from the sterile part below in spikes or panicles, 
and composed of very many large round spore-cases, splitting cross-wise, 
and arising from the tissue of the frond (not the epidermis, as in true 
ferns). Prothallium developing below the ground. 
An order of three genera and twenty species. . 
I. BOTRYCHIUM, Swartz. Grape-Fern, Moonwort. 
Fronds from a bud enclosed in the stalk of the previous season, not 
net-veined, fern-like below ; spore-cases separate, in a double row on the 
branches of the fertile part. Growing in wet or boggy places. 
Ten species, seven North American. 
* Sterile portion 7iot long stalked. 
Sterile portion pinnate only. 
B. Lunaria L- Sterile portion very short-petioled ; near the middle 
of the stalk (which *rises from the ground and bears the fertile part at the 
top), oblong, having five to fifteen moon-shaped or fan-shaped obtuse 
divisions; veins forking repeatedly; fertile part, two to three times 
pinnate. Plant four to ten inches high, fleshy. 
Bard Creek, Colorado (Parry). Is found in various parts of the world. 
> B. Simplex^ Hitchcock. Sterile portion, short-petioled, near the 
base of the stalk, pinnately lobed into three to seven broadly obovate 
divisions, or undivided and roundish, (but not net-veined, as in Ophio- 
glossuni). Fertile portion once or twice pinnate. 
Variety compositum, Milde. A low alpine plant, with sterile 
portion about an inch long, of three entire or cut divisions. 
California and Yellowstone Park. The typical form in the eastern States and 
Europe. Rare. 
B. Boroale Milde is credited to Unalaska, but does not reach our limits. 
