PLATE XXXIX
RUSTY WOODSIA
54. RUSTY WOODSIA
Woodsia Ilvensis
From Labrador and Greenland south to North Carolina and Kentucky, usually on exposed rocks in somewhat mountainous regions. A few inches to nearly one foot high.
Fronds.—Oblong-lance-shaped, rather smooth above, the stalk and under surface of the frond thickly clothed with rusty chaff, once-pinnate; pinnæ oblong, obtuse, sessile, cut into oblong segments; fruit-dots round, near the margin, often confluent at maturity; indusium detached by its base under the sporangia, dividing into slender hairs which curl above them.
Last Decoration Day, while clambering over some rocky cliffs in the Berkshire Hills, I found the Rusty Woodsia growing in masses so luxuriant to the eye and so velvety to the touch that it hardly suggested the bristly looking plant which one finds later in the summer.
This fern reverses the usual order of things, being gray-haired in youth and brown-haired in old age, with the result that in May its effect is a soft, silvery green. But even in August, if you chance upon a vigorous tuft springing from some rocky crevice, despite its lack of delicacy and its bristle of red-brown hairs or chaff, the plant is an attractive one.
Environment has much to do with the charm of ferns. The first plant of this species I ever identified grew on a rocky shelf within a few feet of a stream which flowed swift and cold from the near mountains. Close by, from the forked branches of a crimson-fruited mountain maple, hung the dainty, deserted nest of a vireo. Always the Rusty Woodsia seems to bring me a message from that abode of solitude and silence.