up at
intervals all summer. The sori are borne on the backs of fertile fronds.
There are usually more sterile than fertile blades, especially in dense
shade. We have waded repeatedly through a miry swamp in Melrose, Mass.,
where the wild calla flourishes along with the blueberry and other swamp
bushes, and have found the chain fern in several shaded spots, but every
frond was sterile. It is said that when exposed to the sun it always faces
the south. Swamps, Maine to Florida, especially along the Atlantic Coast,
and often in company with the narrow-leaved species.

[Illustration: Net-Veined Chain Fern. _Woodwardia areolata_ (Stratford,
Conn.)]

(2) NET-VEINED CHAIN FERN

NARROW-LEAVED CHAIN FERN

_Woodwardia areolata. W. angustifolia_

Root stocks creeping and chaffy. Sterile and fertile fronds unlike; sterile
ones nine to twelve inches tall, deltoid-ovate. Broadest at the base, with
lanceolate, serrulate divisions united by a broad wing. Veins areolate;
fertile fronds taller, twelve to twenty inches high with narrowly linear
divisions, the areoles and fruit-dots in a single row each side of the
secondary midrib, the latter sunk in the tissues.

This species is less common than the Virginia fern, but they often grow
near each other. We have collected both in the Blue Hill reservation near
Boston, and both have been found in Hingham, Medford, and Reading, and
doubtless in other towns along the coast. Mrs. Parsons speaks of finding
them in the flat, sandy country near Buzzard's Bay. The net-veined species
has some resemblance to the sensitive fern, but in the latter the spore
cases are shut up in small pods formed by the contracting and rolling up of
the lobes, whereas the chain fern bears its sori on the under side of long,
narrow pinnae. Besides, the sterile fronds of the latter have serrulate
segments. As in the sensitive fern there are many curious gradations
between the fertile and sterile fronds, both in shape and fruitfulness.
Waters calls them the "_obtusilobata_ form."

[Illustration: The Spleenworts 1. Narrow-leaved 2. Ebony 3. Rue 4. Scott's
5. Maidenhair 6. Green 7. Mountain]

THE SPLEENWORTS

A. THE ROCK SPLEENWORTS. _Asplenium_

Small, evergreen ferns. Fruit-dots oblong or linear, oblique, separate when
young. Indusium straight or rarely curved, fixed lengthwise on the upper
side of a fertile veinlet, opening toward the midrib. Veins free. Scales of
rhizome and stipes narrow, of firm texture