PLATE XXV
NEW YORK FERN
a Portion of fertile pinna
b Tip of pinna showing veining
38. MARSH FERN
Aspidium Thelypteris (Dryopteris Thelypteris)
New Brunswick to Florida, in wet woods and swamps. One to nearly three feet high.
Fronds.—Lance-shaped, slightly downy, once-pinnate, fertile fronds longer-stalked than the sterile; pinnæ, the lower ones hardly smaller than the others, cut into oblong, entire lobes, which are obtuse in the sterile fronds, but appear acute in the fertile ones from the strongly revolute margins; veins once or twice forked; fruit-dots small, round, half-way between midvein and margin, or nearer margin, soon confluent; indusium small.
In our wet woods and open swamps, and occasionally in dry pastures, the erect, fresh-green fronds of the Marsh Fern grow abundantly. The lowest pinnæ are set so high on the long slender stem as to give the fern the appearance of trying to keep dry, daintily holding its skirts out of the mud as it were.
The plant's range is wide. As I pick my way through marshy inland woods, using as bridges the fallen trunks and interlacing roots of trees, its bright fronds standing nearly three feet high, crowd about me. Close by, securing, like myself, a firmer foothold by the aid of the trees' roots, I notice the flat, mottled green and white rosettes and the slender wands of flowers of the rattlesnake orchid. In the open swamps beyond the fern's companion is another orchid, the ladies' tresses, with braided spikes of white, and in this case deliciously fragrant flowers.
