[Illustration: Climbing Fern. Lygodium palmatum]
Fifty years ago this beautiful fern was more common than at present. There was a considerable colony in a low, alluvial meadow thicket at North Hadley, Mass., not far from Mt. Toby, where we collected it freely in 1872. Many used to decorate their homes with its handsome sprays, draping it gracefully over mirrors and pictures. It was known locally as the Hartford fern. Greedy spoilers ruthlessly robbed its colonies and it became scarce, at least in the Mt. Toby region. In Connecticut a law was enacted in 1867 for its protection and with good results. But as Mr. C.A. Weatherby states in the American Fern Journal (Vol. II, No. 4), the encroachments of tillage (mainly of tobacco, which likes the same soil), are forcing it from its cherished haunts, thus jeopardizing its survival. Doubtless an aggressive agriculture is in part responsible for its scarcity in the more northern locality. It is still found here and there in New England, New York and New Jersey; also in Kentucky, Tennessee and Florida, but is nowhere common. The fertile portion dies when the spores mature, but the sterile frondlets remain green through the winter. A handsome species for the fernery in the house or out of doors.
IV
[ADDER'S TONGUE FAMILY]
OPHIOGLOSSÀCEÆ
Plants more or less fern-like consisting of a stem with a single leaf. In Ophioglóssum the leaf or sterile segment is entire, the veins reticulated and the sporangia in a simple spike. In Botrýchium the sterile segment is more or less incised, the veins free, and the sori in a panicle or compound or rarely simple spike. Sporangia naked, opening by a transverse slit. Spores copious, sulphur-yellow.
ADDER'S TONGUE. Ophioglóssum vulgàtum
Rootstock erect, fleshy. Stem simple, two to ten inches high, bearing one smooth, entire leaf about midway, and a terminal spike embracing the sporangia, coherent in two ranks on its edges. (Generic name from the Greek meaning the tongue of a snake, in allusion to the narrow spike of the sporangia.)
In moist meadows or rarely on dry slopes. "Overlooked rather than rare." New England states and in general widely distributed. July. Often grows in company with the ragged orchis. The ancient ointment known as "adder's speare ointment" had the adder's tongue leaves as a chief ingredient, and is said to be still used for wounds in English villages.
"For them that are with newts or snakes or adders stung,
He seeketh out a herb that's called adder's tongue."