The following delightful description of the Fragrant Shield Fern was written by Mr. C. G. Pringle, and is taken from Meehan's "Native Flowers and Ferns":
"In the several stations of Aspidium fragrans among the Green Mountains which I have explored, the plant is always seen growing from the crevices or on the narrow shelves of dry cliffs—not often such cliffs as are exposed to the sunlight, unless it be on the summits of the mountains, but usually such cliffs as are shaded by firs, and notably such as overhang mountain-rivulets and waterfalls. When I visit such places in summer, the niches occupied by the plants are quite dry. I think it would be fatal to the plant if much spray should fall on it during the season of its active growth. When you enter the shade and solitude of the haunts of this fern, its presence is betrayed by its resinous odor; looking up the face of the cliff, usually mottled with lichens and moss, you see it often far above your reach hanging against the rock, masses of dead brown fronds, the accumulations of many years, preserved by the resinous principle which pervades them; for the fronds, as they disport regularly about the elongating caudex, fall right and left precisely like a woman's hair. Above the tuft of drooping dead fronds, which radiate from the centre of the plant, grow from six to twenty green fronds, which represent the growth of the season, those of the preceding year dying toward autumn."
47. BRAUN'S HOLLY FERN
Aspidium aculeatum, var. Braunii (Dryopteris Braunii)
Canada to Maine, the mountains of Pennsylvania and westward, in deep rocky woods. One to more than two feet long, with chaffy stalks, having brown scales.
Fronds.—Thick, twice-pinnate; pinnæ lanceolate, tapering both ways; pinnules covered with hairs and scales, truncate, nearly rectangular at the base; fruit-dots roundish, small, mostly near the midveins; indusium orbicular, entire.
This fern is said to have been first discovered by Frederick Pursh in 1807 in Smuggler's Notch, Mount Mansfield, Vt. In the Green Mountains and in the Catskills several stations have been established. It has been found also in the Adirondacks and in Oswego County, N. Y., and it is now reported as common in the rocky woods of northern Maine, and by mountain brooks in northern New England.
Braun's Holly Fern is one of the numerous varieties of the Prickly Shield Fern or A. aculeatum (D. aculeata).
Though few of our fern-students will have an opportunity to follow the Prickly Shield Fern through all the forms it assumes in different parts of the world, yet undoubtedly many of them will have the pleasure of seeing in one of its lonely and lovely haunts our own variety, Braun's Holly Fern.