66 
NATURE STUDY. 
mostly in depressions where at the time of the fire sufficient 
rrfoisture was accumulated to prevent a deep burning of the soil. 
Yet there were other spots where green leaves might be seen 
though the location was such that no water could have accumu¬ 
lated. What were these hardy plants that could thus success¬ 
fully resist drought and fire ? They were ferns every time. 
The great rootstocks had been so thoroughly saturated with 
their own juices as to defy even the flames. The first leaves, to 
be sure, had been destroyed, but the recuperative energy of the 
plants had manifested itself in the production of new leaves. 
Some of the plants were the so-called wood ferns, Dryopteris 
marginalis and spinulosa, but most of them belonged to the 
genus Osmunda, and that species which had apparently resisted 
unfavorable conditions with the greatest success was the one 
bearing the name of good old Dr. John Clayton of Virginia, 
Osmunda Claytoniana. Examining more closely one cluster of 
thrifty leaves, I found that not only the vegetative but the repro¬ 
ductive energy stored in the partially charred rootstock had tri¬ 
umphed and several of the leaves had formed fruit in the man¬ 
ner characteristic of the species. A few plants of the similar 
species, O. cinnamomea, had also succeeded in surviving the 
catastrophe, but I was unable to find any fruiting leaves. 
Of this genus, Osmunda, we have three species, regalis, 
Claytoniana, and cinnamomea, all of them abundant and showy. 
Nature has been very kind in so differentiating these that the 
amateur botanist need have no difficulty in distinguishing them. 
O. regalis, the royal fern, usually growing in wet grounds, has 
very large bipinnate leaves on which the fruiting pinnules are 
panicled at the summit. In O. cinnamomea, the cinnamon fern, 
a whole leaf is t . devoted to the fruit, after the ripening of which 
it withers. In O. Claytoniana, Clayton’s fern, several pairs of 
the middle pinnae bear the fruit and, like the preceding, wither 
after maturing. Now in the plant's which had thrown up fertile 
leaves after the fire nature seemed to have made aTrantic effort 
to make up for losTtime. NoConly^were the usual numbers of 
pinnae transformed into masses of^sporangia, but several of the 
