[Illustration: Silvery Spleenwort. Athyrium acrostichoides]
The sterile fronds come up first and the taller, fertile ones do not appear until late in June. Where there are no fruit-dots the hairs on the upper surface of the fronds will help to distinguish it from specimens of the Marsh fern tribe, which it somewhat resembles. The regular rows of nearly straight, clear-cut sori of the fertile fronds are very attractive, and the lower ones, as well as those at the slender tips of the pinnæ, are frequently double.
Rich woods and moist, shady banks, New England to Kentucky and westward. Generally distributed but hardly common.
(4) NARROW-LEAVED SPLEENWORT
ATHÝRIUM ANGUSTIFÒLIUM. Asplenium angustifòlium
Fronds one to four feet tall, pinnate. Pinnæ numerous, thin, short-stalked, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, those of the fertile fronds narrower. Fruit-dots linear. Indusium slightly convex.
[Illustration: Narrow-leaved Spleenwort. Athyrium angustifolium (Vermont) (Geo. E. Davenport)]
In rich woods from southern Canada and New Hampshire to Minnesota and southward. September. Not common. Mt. Toby, Mass., Berlin and Meriden, Conn., and Danville, Vt. Can be cultivated but should not be exposed to severe weather, as its thin and delicate fronds are easily injured. Woolson writes of it, "There is nothing in the fern kingdom which looks so cool and refreshing on a hot day as a mass of this clear-cut, delicately made-up fern."
