How to know the ferns

by Frances Theodora Parsons

[GROUP VI]
FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE AND USUALLY SIMILAR, FRUIT-DOTS ROUND

37. NEW YORK FERN

Aspidium Noveboracense (Dryopteris Noveboracensis)

Newfoundland to South Carolina, in woods and open meadows. One to more than two feet high, with stalks shorter than the fronds.

Fronds.—Lance-shaped, tapering both ways from the middle pinnate; pinnæ lance-shaped, the lowest pairs shorter and deflexed, divided into flat, oblong lobes which are not reflexed over the fruit-dots; fruit-dots round, distinct, near the margin; indusium minute.

At times the pale-green fronds of the New York Fern throng to the roadside, which is flanked by a tangled thicket of Osmundas, wild roses, and elder bushes.

Again, they stay quietly at home in the open marsh or in the shadow of the hemlocks and cedars, where they have fragrant pyrola and pipsissewa for company, and where the long, melancholy note of the peewee breaks the silence.

This plant is easily distinguished from the Marsh Fern by the noticeable tapering at both ends of its frond, and by the flat instead of reflexed margins to the lobes of the fertile pinnæ.