Page:Parsons How to Know the Ferns 7th ed.djvu/192

 they have fragrant pyrola and pipsissewa for company, and where the long, melancholy note of the peewee breaks the silence.

This plant is easily distinguished from the Marsh Fern by the noticeable tapering at both ends of its frond, and by the flat instead of reflexed margins to the lobes of the fertile pinnæ.

Fronds.—Lance-shaped, slightly downy, once-pinnate, fertile fronds longer-stalked than the sterile; pinnæ, the lower ones hardly smaller than the others, cut into oblong, entire lobes, which are obtuse in the sterile fronds, but appear acute in the fertile ones from the strongly revolute margins; veins once or twice forked; fruit-dots small, round, half-way between midvein and margin, or nearer margin, soon confluent; indusium small.

In our wet woods and open swamps, and occasionally in dry pastures, the erect, fresh-green fronds of the Marsh Fern grow abundantly. The lowest pinnæ are set so high on the long slender stem as to give the fern the appearance of trying to keep dry, daintily holding its skirts out of the mud as it were.

The plant's range is wide. As I pick my way through marshy inland woods, using as bridges the fallen trunks and interlacing roots of trees, its bright fronds standing nearly three feet high, crowd about me. Close by, securing, like myself, a firmer foothold by the aid of the trees' roots, I notice the flat,