OSTRICH-FERN.
ONOCLEA STRUTHIOPTERIS, Hoffmann.
Ostrich-Fern.
Onoclea Struthiopteris:—Caudex short, thick, erect, emitting slender subterranean stolons; stalks stout, a few inches to a foot long, chaffy at the base; fronds standing in a vase-like crown, dimorphous; sterile ones one to ten feet high, herbaceo-membranaceous, broadly lanceolate, narrowed from the middle to the base, abruptly short-acuminate, pinnate; pinnæ very many, sessile, the lowest ones sinuate and deflexed, the rest three to eight inches long, five to nine lines wide, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, deeply pinnatifid into numerous close-placed oblong obtuse entire segments provided with a midvein and several simple veinlets on each side; fertile fronds in the middle of the crown or vase, much shorter than the sterile, rigid, contracted, narrowed at the base, pinnate; pinnæ one to two inches long, crowded, obliquely ascending, linear, obtuse, sub-entire or pinnately lobed, the lobes one or two lines long and broad, the margins much recurved, and the whole pinna forming a somewhat articulated pod-like body; veinlets of the fertile segments few, soriferous on the back; receptacle elevated; indusium very delicate, lacerate-toothed, half surrounding the sorus; sporangia at length confluent and filling the fertile pinnæ.
Onoclea Struthiopteris, Hoffmann, “Deutschlands Flora, p. 11 (1795).”—Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 111.—Weber & Mohr, Taschenbuch, p. 47, t. iv., f. 3, 4.—Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 97, t. 105.—Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 97, t. xvii., f. 11-15.—Milde, Fil. Eur. et Atlant., p. 154.
Onoclea nodulosa, Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 97, t. 104 (Perhaps also of Michaux, but this is still uncertain).
Onoclea Germanica, Hooker, Sp. Fil., iv., p. 161.—Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 46.
Osmunda Struthiopteris, Linnæus, Sp. Pl., p. 1522.
Struthiopteris Germanica, Willdenow, “Enum, p. 1071;” Sp. Pl., v., p. 288.—Link, Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 38.—Hooker, Fl. Bor.-Am., ii., p. 262.—Torrey, Fl. New York, ii., p. 486.—Gray, Manual, ed. i., p. 623, etc.—Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ. et Helv., ed. iii., p. 739.—Williamson, Fern-Etchings, t. 44.
Struthiopteris Pennsylvanica, Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 289.—Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept., ii., p. 266.—Torrey, Compendium, p. 385.—Bigelow, Fl. Boston., ed. iii., p. 421.
Struthiopteris, the genus only, Willdenow, in Berl. Mag., 1809, p. 160.
Hab.—Low grounds, especially in fine alluvial soil subject to the overflow of rivers; from the Saskatchewan and Lake Winnipeg to New Brunswick, and southward to Pennsylvania and Illinois. Mentioned by Alexander Braun as coming from Arkansas. From Lapland to Sicily, and eastward to the Amoor region, Sachalin and Kamtschatka. Not known in the western parts of either Europe or America.
Description:—The ostrich-fern is one of our finest ferns, being surpassed in grandeur only by Acrostichum aureum, Woodwardia radicans, and perhaps Osmunda regalis. The plant is propagated chiefly by long and slender stolons, bearing appressed rudimentary stalk-bases. These stolons are said by Sachs to originate from buds formed on the stalks near the base: they run underground for several inches or a foot, and at the end rise to the surface and there thicken into a short erect caudex, covered by imbricating stalk-bases, and throwing up from the apex a grand vase-like circle of foliage, which is often higher than a man’s head, and sometimes extends above his utmost reach.
The stalks are seldom over a foot long: they are flattened, blackish, and chaffy at the base, but above ground they are green, drying dull-brown, somewhat four-sided, and deeply channelled in front, when dried furrowed on the sides also. They contain two flattened fibro-vascular bundles. The stalks of the sterile fronds are rather longer than the others, but more rigid, and remain erect till the second year.
The sterile fronds are oblong-lanceolate in outline, gradually narrowed to the base from near the middle and abruptly short acuminate. The pinnæ are usually of nearly equal breadth from the base to beyond the middle. They are pinnatifid to within a line of the midrib into numerous oblong and obtuse segments, the veins of which are free, simple and pinnately arranged on a midvein.
The fertile fronds are produced late in the summer, and are contracted, much shorter than the others, and very rigid. The pinnæ are sometimes nearly entire, and in other examples pinnately lobed. The margins are very much recurved, so that the pinnæ are pod-like, and either sub-cylindrical or somewhat moniliform. The venation is free, and the sori are dorsal on the veins. Mr. Faxon writes: “The indusium can be detected only when the fertile frond is very young, and appears as a very delicate, lacerate membrane, attached at the base of the receptacle, and serving to separate the sorus from its neighbors. I have not found it in any case hood-like as in O. sensibilis. The sori are quickly confluent, and all trace of the indusium is soon lost. The membranaceous edge of the transformed fertile pinna is attached near the bases of the inferior sori and a fold is usually found pressed against the sori as seen in the drawing (Fig. 3). This is usually ruptured, so as to leave a portion attached at the base of the sorus, and must not be mistaken for the true indusium, which is within.”
The sporangia have twenty-six or twenty-eight articulations of the ring. The spores are dark-colored and ovoid.
Imperfectly fertile fronds are often found, which are analogous to the “obtusilobata” condition of O. sensibilis.
ALPINE BEECH-FERN.
FRAGRANT WOOD-FERN.
PHEGOPTERIS ALPESTRIS, Mettenius.
Alpine Beech-Fern.
Phegopteris alpestris:—Root-stock short and thick, erect or oblique; stalks sub-terminal, four to ten inches long, bearing a few brown spreading scales near the base; fronds one to two feet long, oblong-lanceolate, membranaceous, smooth, pinnate with delicately bi-pinnatifid deltoid-lanceolate pinnæ, the lower ones distant, and decreasing moderately; pinnules ovate-oblong or oblong-lanceolate, doubly incised and toothed; sori small, rounded, naked, usually copious on all or all but the lowest pinnæ.
Phegopteris alpestris, Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 83; Phegopteris, p. 10.
Polypodium alpestre, Hoppe, “in Spreng. Syst. Veg., iv., par. ii., p. 320.”—Koch, Syn. Fl. Germ., “ed. 2, p. 974;” ed. 3, p. 731.—Moore, Nat. Pr. Brit. Ferns, t. vii.—Hooker & Arnott, Brit. Fl., ed. 7, p. 582.—Hooker, Brit. Ferns, t. vi.; Sp. Fil., iv., p. 251.—Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 311.
Aspidium alpestre, Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 421.—Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 58, t. 60.
Asplenium alpestre, Mettenius, Asplenium, p. 198, t. vi., figs. 1-6.
Pseudathyrium alpestre, Newman, “Phytologist, iv., p. 370;” Hist. Brit. Ferns, ed. iii., p. 200.
Athyrium alpestre, “Nylander;” Milde, Fil. Eu. & Atl., p. 53.
Polypodium rhæticum, Linnæus, Sp. Pl., p. 1552, fide Schkuhr, l. c.; but Moore thinks the plant not the same.
Aspidium rhæticum, Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 59.—Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 280.
Hab.—Among rocks at high elevations; on Lassen’s Peak, Mount Shasta, Pyramid Peak, Mount Rose, and other high points in the Sierra of California, Brewer, Lemmon, Muir; Cascade Mountains of British Columbia, Lyall. In the Alps and the mountains of Northern Europe; also in the Caucasus, and in Asia Minor.
Description.—The root-stock is rather short, but branching, and seems to form great entangled masses. The fronds stand in a crown or circle, rising from the end of the root-stock, which is made thick and heavy with the chaffy bases of former stalks. Mr. Lemmon writes thus: “It grows in a limited locality, so far as I know, near the summit of Mount Rose, near Webber Lake, and say at an elevation of 7,000 feet; lat. 39½° N. Fronds collected into a large mass four feet across, short at the circumference, in the centre three feet high; most of them fertile, and densely so, as in the specimen sent.”
The stalks are usually but a few (four to six) inches long, and in the dried specimens of a brownish straw-color, becoming nearly black at the base. They bear a few large ferruginous chaffy scales, and are deeply channelled and furrowed. The fibro-vascular system of the stalk is altered by contraction in drying, but apparently agrees with Dr. Milde’s description of Athyrium: “There are two oblong peripheric bundles in the base of the stalk, which, at the base of the lamina, are united into one of a horse-shoe shape by an arc parallel to the back of the stalk.” In the middle of a stalk from one of the California specimens I find two systems of ducts, one on each side of the stalk, and the two united by a curved and contorted border of firm blackish tissue (sclerenchyma).
The fronds are from one to two feet long, and from three to six inches wide. In general shape they are oblong-lanceolate, acuminate, and slightly narrowed at the base. The texture is softly membranaceous, and both surfaces are smooth. The primary pinnæ are numerous, the lower ones gradually farther apart: their shape is lanceolate from a broad base. They are usually twice pinnatifid, the pinnules being connected by a very narrow foliaceous border along the midribs. The ultimate segments are sharply toothed. The fruit-dots are very abundant, and usually are found on all the pinnæ. They are placed on the back of the free veinlets, and are apparently devoid of indusium; though Dr. Mettenius has discovered on young fronds an exceedingly delicate and fugitive indusium, resembling in some degree that of Asplenium § Athyrium. Accordingly, in his later work, he referred the species to the genus Asplenium, placing it next to A. Filix-fœmina. Milde, in his work on the ferns of Europe and Atlantis, sought to re-establish Athyrium as a genus, and placed this fern in it, saying “sori ... rotundi, primum breviter oblongi indusio fugaci minutissimo ciliato instructi.” The spores are ovoid, and apparently covered with anastomosing raised lines. Those I have examined are fuscous-brown, but Milde says “sub-nigræ verrucosæ.”
There is a European var. flexilis, with very narrow, nearly sessile fronds, and the pinnæ often deflexed, which has not been observed in America.
Undoubtedly the greatest resemblance of this fern is to the lady-fern, Asplenium Filix-fœmina; but that species has a very well-developed indusium, while the minute objects delineated by Mettenius scarcely deserve the name.
The stalks are clearly continuous with the root-stock; and for this reason the plant is plainly not a Polypodium, whatever else it may finally be determined to be.
ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS, Swartz.
Fragrant Wood-Fern.
Aspidium fragrans:—Root-stock short and stout, very chaffy, with ample bright-brown glossy scales, which also abound on the short clustered stalks, and extend, diminishing in size, nearly to the top of the frond; fronds rigid-membranaceous, glandular, aromatic, four to ten inches long, six to twenty-four lines wide, lanceolate, acuminate, narrowed from the middle to the base, bipinnate; pinnæ numerous, oblong-lanceolate; pinnules many, one to two lines long, oblong, obtuse, adnate by a decurrent base, pinnately incised with very minute crenated teeth, or in smaller fronds nearly entire, the back nearly hidden by the large thin imbricating indusia, which are orbicular with a narrow sinus, and more or less toothed and glandular around the margin.
Aspidium fragrans, Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 51.—Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 253.—Hooker, in “Parry’s 2d Voy., App., p. 410;” Fl. Bor. Am., p. 410.—Ruprecht, Distr. Crypt. Vasc. Imp. Ross., p. 35.—Mettenius, Aspid., p. 56.—Gray, Manual, ed. 2, p. 598.—Milde, Fil. Eur. et Atlant., p. 117.
Polypodium fragrans, Linnæus, Sp. Pl., p. 1550.
Polystichum fragrans, Ledebour, “Fl. Ross., iv., p. 514.”—Maximowicz, Prim. Fl. Amur., p. 339.
Dryopteris fragrans, Schott, Gen. Fil., Observ. sub Polysticho.
Nephrodium fragrans, Richardson, “App. to Frankl. Journ., p. 753.”—Hooker & Greville, Ic. Fil., t. lxx.—Hooker, Sp. Fil., iv., p. 122.—Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 275.
Dryopteris rubum idæum spirans, Ammann, “Ruth., p. 251.”
Hab.—In crevices of shaded cliffs, and on mossy rocks, especially near cascades and rivulets, from Northern New England to Wisconsin, and northward to Arctic America. Also in the Caucasus, and in Siberia, Mantchooria, and Kamtschatka. Special American localities are Mount Kineo, Maine, A. H. and C. E. Smith; at Berlin Falls, the “Alpine Cascade,” and the “Gulch,” all near the White Mountains, H. Willey; Mount Mansfield, Vermont, C. G. Pringle; Lake Avalanche, Adirondack Mountains, New York, C. H. Peck; Falls of St. Croix, Wisconsin, C. C. Parry, and on the Penokee Iron Range, in the same State, Lapham; Saguenay River, Canada, D. A. Watt. It is apparently more common farther north: Sitka, Iliuliuk, Unalaska, Arakamtchetchene, Kotzebue Bay, Igloolik, Rittenbenk in Greenland, and several other places, are recorded as stations for it.
Description.—The root-stock is rather stout, ascending or erect; and its apparent thickness is much increased by the persistent bases of stalks, which also give it a dense covering of broad bright-brown chaffy scales. The fronds, frequently to the number of six or eight, besides old and shrivelled ones, stand in a crown at the upper end of the root-stocks, resting on stalks from one to four inches long, which are usually very chaffy, the chaff continued along the rachis and midribs, though composed of smaller scales than those lower down. The fronds are from three or four to ten inches in length; and the greatest breadth, just above the middle, is from one-fifth to one-sixth of the length. The outline is exactly lanceolate, as the apex is acute, and the lower part gradually tapering to a somewhat narrowed base. The fronds are delicately, but densely, bipinnate. In a frond nine inches long there are about thirty primary pinnæ on each side, and in one of the middle pinnæ about ten oblong-ovate obtuse pinnately-incised pinnules on each side. The pinnules are from a line to two lines long, and are adnate to the secondary rachis by a more or less decurrent base. In large fronds the teeth of the pinnules are again crenately toothed; but in small specimens the pinnules themselves are entire, or but slightly toothed. Two sterile fronds collected by Professor M. W. Harrington, in Iliuliuk, Alaska, are broadly ovate-lanceolate in outline, and have acute primary pinnæ; and other specimens, some from Eastern Canada, collected by Mr. Watt, and some from Northern Wisconsin, collected by Mr. Lapham, are much slenderer and less scaly than usual. This is the var. β of Hooker. Usually the fronds are rather rigid, full-green above, a little paler beneath, and both surfaces, together with the rachis, especially the canal along the upper side of the rachis, are dotted with very minute pellucid pale amber-colored glands. The fronds commonly fruit very fully, even the lowest pinna bearing sporangia. The indusia are very large, thin, orbicular, with a narrow sinus, more or less ragged or toothed and gland-bearing at the margin, and are so dense as to overlap each other, and nearly conceal the back of the pinnules. The spores are ovoid, and have a minutely verrucose or warty surface.
The pleasant odor of the plant remains many years in the herbarium. The early writers compare the fragrance to that of raspberries, and Milde repeats the observation. Hooker and Greville thought it “not unlike that of the common primrose.” Maximowicz states that the odor is sometimes lacking. Milde quotes Redowsky as saying that the Yakoots of Siberia use the plant in place of tea; and, having tried the experiment myself, I can testify to the not unpleasant and very fragrant astringency of the infusion.
The illustration is taken from a plant collected by Mr. D. A. Watt on the Saguenay River, in Canada.