Asplenium Filix-fœmina
A wood and roadside fern, growing in all parts of the country and presenting many varying forms. One to three feet high, with tufted, straw-colored, reddish, or brownish stalks.
Fronds.—Broadly lance-shaped, tapering toward the apex, twice-pinnate; pinnæ lance-shaped; pinnules oblong-lanceolate, toothed or incised; fruit-dots short, curved; indusium delicate, curved, sometimes shaped like a horseshoe.
The Lady Fern is found in all parts of the country. Sometimes it forms a part of the tangle of wild, graceful things which grow close to the roadside fence. Again, in company with the Silvery Spleenwort, the Evergreen Wood Fern and the Spinulose Shield Fern, forming perhaps a background for the brilliant scarlet clusters of the wild bergamot, it fringes the banks of some amber-colored brook which surprises us with its swift, noiseless flow as we stroll through the woods.
PLATE XV
LADY FERN
a Fruiting pinnule
b Portion of same
The earliest fronds uncurl in May. In June the plant is very graceful and pleasing. When growing in shaded places it is often conspicuous by reason of its bright pink or reddish stalks, which contrast effectively with the delicate green of the foliage. But in later summer, judging by my own experience, the Lady Fern loses much of its delicacy. Many of its fronds become disfigured and present a rather blotched and coarse appearance.
This seems strange in view of the fact that the plant is called by Lowe, a well-known English writer, the "Queen of Ferns," and that it is one of the few ferns to which we find reference in literature. Scott pays it the compliment, rarely bestowed upon ferns, of mentioning it by name:
"Where the copse wood is the greenest,
Where the fountain glistens sheenest,
Where the morning dew lies longest,
There the Lady Fern grows strongest."