Page:Parsons How to Know the Ferns 7th ed.djvu/94

 are leaf-like below, and are tipped above with their flower-like fruit-clusters.

Like its kinsmen, the Royal Fern appears in May in our wet woods and fields. The delicate little croziers uncurl with dainty grace, the plants which grow in the open among the yellow stars of the early crow-foot, and the white clusters of the spring cress being so tinged with red that they suffuse the meadows with warm color.

Though one of our tallest ferns, with us it never reaches the ten or eleven feet with which it is credited in Great Britain. The tallest plants I have found fall short of six feet. Occasionally we see large tracts of land covered with mature plants that lack a foot or more of the two feet given as the minimum height. This tendency to