PLATE X
PURPLE CLIFF BRAKE
a Portion of fertile frond
Although the Purple Cliff Brake grows, I believe within fifteen miles of my home in Albany, I never saw the plant until this summer some hundred miles nearer the centre of the State. During a morning call I chanced to mention that I was anxious to find two or three ferns which were said to grow in the neighborhood. My hostess told me that twenty-five years before, on some limestone cliffs about eight miles away, she had found two unknown ferns which had been classified and labelled by a botanical friend. Excusing herself she left me and soon returned with carefully pressed specimens of the Purple Cliff Brake and the little Rue Spleenwort, the two ferns I was most eager to find. Such moments as I experienced then of long-deferred but peculiar satisfaction go far toward making one an apostle of hobbies. My pleasure was increased by the kind offer to guide me to the spot which had yielded the specimens.
One morning soon after we were set down at the little railway station from which we purposed to walk to the already-mentioned cliffs. We were not without misgivings as we followed an indefinite path across some limestone quarries, for a plant may easily disappear from a given station in the course of twenty-five years. In a few moments the so-called path disappeared in a fringe of bushes which evidently marked the beginning of a precipitous descent. Cautiously clinging to whatever we could lay hold of, bushes, roots of trees or imbedded rocks, we climbed over the cliff's side, still following the semblance of a path. On our left a stream plunged nearly two hundred feet into the ravine below. For some distance the eye could follow its silver course, then it disappeared beneath the arching trees. On our right, many miles beyond, through the blue haze which hung over the distant valley, we could see the lake to which the stream was hurrying.
We could not surrender ourselves with comfort to the beauty of the outlook, as our surroundings were not such as to put us altogether at ease. Overhead hung great rocks, so cracked and seamed and shattered as to threaten a complete downfall, while beneath our feet the path which led along the face of the cliff crumbled away, so that it was difficult in places to obtain any foothold. Having passed the more perilous spots, however, we became accustomed to the situation and turned our attention to the unpromising wall of rock which rose beside us. From its crevices hung graceful festoons of Bulblet Bladder Fern, and apparently nothing but Bulblet Bladder Fern. But soon one of the party gave a cry and pointed in triumph to a bluish-green cluster of foliage which sprang from a shallow pocket overhead. Even though one had not seen the plant before, there was no mistaking the wiry purplish stalks, the leathery, pinnately parted, blue-green fronds, and, above all, the marginal rows of bright brown sporangia peculiar to the Purple Cliff Brake. Soon after we found several other plants, all of them decidedly scraggly in appearance, with but few green fronds and many leafless stalks. Occasionally a small sterile frond, with broader, more oblong pinnæ, could be seen, but these were in the minority. A number of very young plants, with little, heart-shaped leaves altogether unlike the mature fronds, were wedged in neighboring crannies.
As our eyes grew more accustomed to the contour and coloring of the cliffs, the success of the day was completed by the discovery of several specimens of the little Rue Spleenwort with tiny fronds flattened against the rock.
When next I saw the Purple Cliff Brake it seemed to me quite a different fern from the rather awkward plant, the mere sight of which I had welcomed so eagerly that any unfavorable criticism of its appearance seems ungrateful.
"The unpromising wall of rock which rose beside us."
Again it sprang from limestone cliffs, even more remote and inaccessible though less dangerous than those where I saw it first. These cliffs were so shattered in places that the broken fragments lay in heaps at their base and on the projecting ledges. Here and there a great shaft of rock had broken away and stood like the turret of a castle or the bastion of a fort. Among the shattered fragments high up on the cliff's side the Purple Cliff Brake grew in a luxuriant profusion that was amazing in view of the surroundings. The rigid, erect fronds formed large tufts of greenish-gray foliage that, at a little distance, so blended with their rocky background as to be almost indistinguishable. The fronds usually were much more compound than those I had seen a few weeks before. The separate plants had a vigorous, bushy appearance that did not suggest the same species. Many of the pinnæ were so turned as to display the ripe sporangia, which formed a bright-brown border to the pale, slender divisions. Here, too, the small sterile fronds were very rare.