24. LADY FERN
Asplenium Filix-fœmina
A wood and roadside fern, growing in all parts of the country and presenting many varying forms. One to three feet high, with tufted, straw-colored, reddish, or brownish stalks.
Fronds.—Broadly lance-shaped, tapering toward the apex, twice-pinnate; pinnæ lance-shaped; pinnules oblong-lanceolate, toothed or incised; fruit-dots short, curved; indusium delicate, curved, sometimes shaped like a horseshoe.
The Lady Fern is found in all parts of the country. Sometimes it forms a part of the tangle of wild, graceful things which grow close to the roadside fence. Again, in company with the Silvery Spleenwort, the Evergreen Wood Fern and the Spinulose Shield Fern, forming perhaps a background for the brilliant scarlet clusters of the wild bergamot, it fringes the banks of some amber-colored brook which surprises us with its swift, noiseless flow as we stroll through the woods.
PLATE XV
LADY FERN
a Fruiting pinnule
b Portion of same
The earliest fronds uncurl in May. In June the plant is very graceful and pleasing. When growing in shaded places it is often conspicuous by reason of its bright pink or reddish stalks, which contrast effectively with the delicate green of the foliage. But in later summer, judging by my own experience, the Lady Fern loses much of its delicacy. Many of its fronds become disfigured and present a rather blotched and coarse appearance.
This seems strange in view of the fact that the plant is called by Lowe, a well-known English writer, the "Queen of Ferns," and that it is one of the few ferns to which we find reference in literature. Scott pays it the compliment, rarely bestowed upon ferns, of mentioning it by name:
"Where the copse wood is the greenest,
Where the fountain glistens sheenest,
Where the morning dew lies longest,
There the Lady Fern grows strongest."
In English works devoted to ferns I find at least two poems, more remarkable for enthusiasm than for poetic inspiration, in its honor. I quote a portion of the one which occurs in Miss Pratt's "Ferns of Great Britain and Their Allies":
"But seek her not in early May,
For a Sibyl then she looks,
With wrinkled fronds that seem to say,
'Shut up are my wizard books!'
Then search for her in the summer woods,
Where rills keep moist the ground,
Where Foxgloves from their spotted hoods,
Shake pilfering insects round;
When up and clambering all about,
The Traveller's Joy flings forth
Its snowy awns, that in and out
Like feathers strew the earth:
Fair are the tufts of meadow-sweet
That haply blossom nigh;
Fair are the whirls of violet
Prunella shows hard by;
But nor by burn in wood, or vale,
Grows anything so fair
As the plumy crest of emerald pale,
That waves in the wind, and soughs in the gale,
Of the Lady Fern, when the sunbeams turn
To gold her delicate hair."
The other, which I give in full, on account of its quaintness, appeared in the Botanical Looker-out of Edwin Lees:
"When in splendor and beauty all nature is crown'd,
The Fern is seen curling half hid in the ground,
But of all the green brackens that rise by the burn,
Commend me alone to the sweet Lady Fern.
"Polypodium indented stands stiff on the rock,
With his sori exposed to the tempest's rough shock;
On the wide, chilly heath Aquilina stands stern,
Not once to be named with the sweet Lady Fern.
"Filix-mas in a circle lifts up his green fronds
And the Heath Fern delights by the bogs and the ponds;
Through their shadowy tufts though with pleasure I turn,
The palm must still rest with the fair Lady Fern.
"By the fountain I see her just spring into sight,
Her texture as frail as though shivering with fright;
To the water she shrinks—I can scarcely discern
In the deep humid shadows the soft Lady Fern.
"Where the water is pouring forever she sits,
And beside her the Ouzel, the Kingfisher flits;
There, supreme in her beauty, beside the full urn,
In the shade of the rock stands the tall Lady Fern.
"Noon burns up the mountain; but here by the fall
The Lady Fern flourishes graceful and tall.
Hours speed as thoughts rise, without any concern,
And float like the spray gliding past the green Fern."