[Illustration: Sori of New York Fern (From Waters's "Ferns," Henry Holt & Co.)]
[Illustration: New York Fern. Aspidium noveboracense]
When bruised its resinous glands give out a pleasing, ferny odor. This species can be distinguished from every other by the greatly reduced pinnæ at its base. Throughout North America east of the Mississippi.
[THE BEECH FERNS]
The beech ferns are often classed with the polypodies, because, like them, they have no indusium; but in other ways they are more akin to the wood ferns. Their stipes are not jointed to the root stock, nor are their sori at the ends of the veins as in the polypodies. We here place them with the wood ferns, retaining the familiar name Phegópteris but giving THELÝPTERIS as a synonym. The fruit-dots are small, round and naked, borne on the back of the veins below the apex. Stipe continuous with the rootstock. Veins free. (The name Phegópteris in Greek means oak or beech fern.)
(1) OAK FERN
Phegópteris dryópteris. THELÝPTERIS DRYÓPTERIS
Fronds glabrous, broadly triangular, ternate, four to seven inches broad, the divisions widely spreading, each division pinnate at the base. Segments oblong, obtuse, entire or toothed. Fruit-dots near the margin. Rootstock slender and creeping from which fronds are produced all summer, in appearance like the small, ternate divisions of the bracken.
This dainty fern has fronds of a delicate yellow-green, "the greenest of all green things growing." Its ternate character is shown even in the uncoiling of the fronds, the three round balls suggesting the sign of the pawnbroker. The parts of the oak fern develop with great regularity, each pinna, pinnule and lobe having another exactly opposite to it nearly always. In rocky woods, common northward; also in Virginia, Kansas and Colorado. A fine species for cultivation at the base of the artificial rockery.