| GROUP VI | FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE |
47. BRAUN'S HOLLY FERN
Aspidium aculeatum, var. Braunii (Dryopteris Braunii)
Canada to Maine, the mountains of Pennsylvania and westward, in deep rocky woods. One to more than two feet long, with chaffy stalks, having brown scales.
Fronds.—Thick, twice-pinnate; pinnæ lanceolate, tapering both ways; pinnules covered with hairs and scales, truncate, nearly rectangular at the base; fruit-dots roundish, small, mostly near the midveins; indusium orbicular, entire.
This fern is said to have been first discovered by Frederick Pursh in 1807 in Smuggler's Notch, Mount Mansfield, Vt. In the Green Mountains and in the Catskills several stations have been established. It has been found also in the Adirondacks and in Oswego County, N. Y., and it is now reported as common in the rocky woods of northern Maine, and by mountain brooks in northern New England.
Braun's Holly Fern is one of the numerous varieties of the Prickly Shield Fern or A. aculeatum (D. aculeata).
Though few of our fern-students will have an opportunity to follow the Prickly Shield Fern through all the forms it assumes in different parts of the world, yet undoubtedly many of them will have the pleasure of seeing in one of its lonely and lovely haunts our own variety, Braun's Holly Fern.
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