Eaton Daniel Cady
Beautiful Ferns
It was collected by Pursh on his visit to America in the early part of this century, the precise locality not known, – in the Flora he says “New Jersey to Virginia,” – and was by him referred to A. Filix-mas. His specimens, preserved in the herbarium at Kew, are partly A. Goldianum and partly A. cristatum. Mr. John Goldie’s discovery was made near Montreal, about the year 1818, and the excellent figure in Hooker & Greville’s Icones Filicum was probably taken from one of his specimens, or perhaps from live plants originally brought by him to the Botanic Garden at Glasgow.
Though not one of our commonest Ferns, this is very abundant in certain localities: – Mrs. Roy sends it from Owen Sound, Canada; Dr. Bumstead got it in Smuggler’s Notch, Mt. Mansfield, Vermont; Mr. Frost has a fine station on Mt. Wantastiquet, New Hampshire; I find it plentiful and fine in the deep ravine called Roaring Brook, in Cheshire, Connecticut; Professor Porter has it from Burgoon’s Gap, in the Alleghany Mountains of Pennsylvania; Mrs. McCall, near Madison, Ohio; Mr. Williamson “found it in great abundance near the Little Rockcastle River, in Laurel County,” Kentucky, and Mr. Curtis has twice sent me fine specimens, with very dark scales at the base of the stalks, from the Peaks of Otter, Virginia.
The name is sometimes written Goldieanum; I give the name as it occurs in Goldie’s original paper in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal.
The specimen drawn by Mr. Faxon is from Vermont, and is represented about two-thirds of the natural size.
CHEILANTHES TOMENTOSA, Link.
Webby Lip-Fern
Cheilanthes tomentosa: – Root-stock short, chaffy with glossy subulate scales; stalks tufted, four to eight inches long, erect, rather stout, clothed with soft woolly pale-ferruginous hairs, intermixed with others which are flattened and decidedly paleaceous; fronds eight to fifteen inches long, oblong-lanceolate, webby-tomentose with slender brownish-white obscurely articulated hairs, especially beneath, tripinnate; primary and secondary pinnæ oblong or ovate-oblong; ultimate pinnules closely placed, but distinct, roundish-obovate, sessile, or adnate to the tertiary rachis, one-half to three-fourths of a line long, the terminal ones twice longer; involucres whitish, continuous round the pinnule and very narrow.
Cheilanthes tomentosa, Link, “Hort. Berol., ii., p. 42.” – Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 65. – Kunze, in Sill. Journ., July, 1848, p. 87; in Linnæa, xxiii., p. 245. – Gray, Manual, ed. ii., p. 592. – Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 50; Cheilanthes, p. 37. – Eaton, in Chapman’s Flora, p. 590; Ferns of the South-West, p. 314. – Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 140. – Williamson, Ferns of Kentucky, p. 49, t. xi.
Myriopteris tomentosa, Fée, Gen. Fil., p. 149, t. xii., A., f. 2 (a pinnule). – Fournier, Pl. Mex., Crypt., p. 125 (species exclusa).
Notholæna tomentosa, J. Smith.
Cheilanthes Bradburii, Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 97, t. cix., B.– Mettenius, Cheilanthes, p. 37.
Hab. – Sandstone rocks along the French Broad River, in North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, Professor Gray, Mr. Canby, Rev. D. R. Shoop, Professor Bradley, etc. Texas, Lindheimer, No. 743. Mountains of Virginia (?) and Kentucky, according to Gray’s Manual, but Mr. Williamson has hitherto failed to find it in the last named State. The Kew herbarium contains, besides Lindheimer’s plant, a very imperfect specimen marked “Manitou Rocks, 250 miles up the Missouri, Bradbury,” and good specimens from Texas collected by Drummond. Kunze states that it was raised [at the Leipzig garden?] from Mexican spores, and that Rugel collected a few specimens in North Carolina; but Fournier rejects it as a Mexican species.
Description: – This is decidedly the largest plant among all our North American species of Cheilanthes, some of the tallest specimens measuring nearly two feet in total length. The root-stock is short, and disposed to branch. It is thickly clad with fine subulate chaff, many of the scales with a dark and rigid midnerve, and others lighter-colored and without midnerve. The plant evidently grows in dense masses. The stalks are clustered, each root-stock sending up a large number of them. They are rigid, wiry, terete and covered with grayish-tawny spreading soft woolly hairs, intermixed with a few which are broader and decidedly paleaceous, especially towards the base. The section is round, and shows a firm exterior sclerenchymatous sheath, within which is a broad circle of brownish parenchyma, and in the middle a single fibro-vascular bundle obtusely triangular in shape, but with the sides slightly hollowed in.
The fronds vary from a few inches to over a foot in length; their general shape is ovate-lanceolate, or oblong-lanceolate; they are in general of a grayish color from the abundance of a fine entangled tomentum, which covers both surfaces, though it is a little thinner and whiter on the upper surface. The large fronds are fully tripinnate. The primary pinnæ are oblong-ovate, short-stalked, one to nearly two inches long, and a half to three-fourths of an inch broad at the base. They are either opposite or alternate, the lower ones, as usual, more separated than those that are higher up on the frond. The secondary pinnæ are close-placed, oblong, obtuse, and again pinnated into from two to five minute rounded or rounded-obovate sessile or adnate-decurrent pinnules on each side, besides a terminal oval pinnule which is twice as large as the lateral ones. These ultimate pinnules are innumerable, and it is in allusion to their very great number in this and the allied species that the generic name Myriopteris was proposed by Fée for the group.
The whole margin of the pinnule is recurved, and from the edge of it is produced a very delicate whitish involucre, the whole forming a sort of pouch, as is admirably represented in the figure given by Fée. The sporangia have a ring of about twenty articulations: Fée says there are vittate or knotted hairs growing among them. The spores are rather large, amber-colored, globose, and delicately trivittate. According to Fée, when placed in water they burst and dissolve into excessively minute sporules.
There can be no doubt that our plant is the Cheilanthes tomentosa of Link. Kunze, who knew Link’s plant perfectly well, referred the North Carolina specimens to it; and Dr. Mettenius, who succeeded to the care of the Leipzig garden, favored me with specimens which are precisely the same thing as the plant here described. But none of the Mexican collectors seem to have found the species, and it may be legitimately queried whether the commonly reported origin of Link’s specimens is the true one. The Cheilanthes tomentosa of the Species Filicum is partly this plant, but mainly the species next to be described.
CHEILANTHES EATONI, Baker.
Eaton’s Lip-Fern
Cheilanthes Eatoni: Root-stock short, chaffy with rather long slenderly acuminate glossy scales; stalks clustered, four to eight inches long, erect, wiry, covered, as are the rachis and its divisions, with narrow shining pale-ferruginous scales and paleaceous hairs intermixed; fronds four to nine inches long, oblong-lanceolate, pubescent above with whitish entangled woolly hairs, beneath covered with a heavy matted ferruginous tomentum, and more or less scaly, especially when young, tripinnate; pinnæ ovate-oblong, lower ones rather distant, upper ones crowded; ultimate pinnules contiguous, half a line long, rounded, but narrowed at the base, the terminal ones often twice larger and more decidedly obovate; margin of the pinnules continuously recurved, the edge slightly membranaceous.
Cheilanthes Eatoni, Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 140. – Porter & Coulter, Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado, p. 153. – Eaton, Ferns of the South-West, p. 315.
Cheilanthes tomentosa, Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 96 (description and Texas plant), t. cix., A.– Eaton, in Botany of the U. S. and Mexican Boundary Survey, p. 234.
Hab. – Texas and New Mexico, Wright, No. 816; Fendler, No. 1016; Indian Territory, between Fort Cobb and Fort Arbuckle, Palmer; near Cañon City, Colorado, Brandegee; from the Rio Grande westward along the Gila to the Colorado River, Collectors of Mexican Boundary Survey. The kind of place where this fern has been collected is not recorded, but it probably grows in the clefts of rocks along the sides and edges of cañons.
Description: – This fern bears so close a resemblance to Cheilanthes tomentosa, that it is not at all surprising that there has been more or less of confusion between the two. It would seem that when writing his account of the genus Cheilanthes for the Species Filicum, Sir W. J. Hooker had, in his collection, no examples of the North Carolina C. tomentosa, and could identify it only by Link’s rather imperfect description and Kunze’s remarks in Silliman’s Journal. Having Wright’s specimens of the plant here described, and Gordon’s fern from the Rattene Mountains – a plant not yet satisfactorily identified – he referred them to the species named by Link; and then perceiving with his accustomed delicate discrimination that Lindheimer’s and Bradbury’s plant was distinct from Wright’s, he gave the former the name of C. Bradburii. It was not until 1860, when the Ferns for Chapman’s Flora were being prepared, that any one suspected that the C. Bradburii was the true C. tomentosa. In 1866, I had an opportunity of explaining the matter to Mr. Baker, then at work on the Synopsis Filicum, and not long after, I was surprised, and I need not say pleased, by finding that he had given to Hooker’s C. tomentosa the name it now bears.
The root-stock is short, assurgent, and chaffy with rather rigid slender-pointed scales, most of them furnished with a dark midnerve. The stalks are tufted, and are perhaps a little slenderer than those of C. tomentosa. They are chaffy throughout, but more especially at the base, with narrow pale ferruginous scales, intermixed with still slenderer paleaceous hairs. The section is slightly flattened on the anterior side. The exterior sheath is firm; inside of it is brownish parenchyma, and in the middle a semicircular fibro-vascular bundle, the ducts in the centre of it arranged in a figure much like a letter X.
The fronds are considerably smaller than in C. tomentosa. They are similarly oblong-lanceolate and tripinnate, the ultimate pinnules being very numerous and rather more closely crowded than in the other species just referred to. The pubescence is harsher and not so webby on the upper side, and is decidedly heavier and more matted on the under surface. The scales of the branches, or secondary rachises, are broader and shorter than those of the stalk and are very conspicuous in young fronds. In older fronds they fall away, to some extent, and are then less abundant.
The pinnules are rather rounder and less oval than in C. tomentosa, and though they are somewhat purse-shaped, the involucre consists almost entirely of the recurved herbaceous margin, the proper whitish and delicately membranous involucre being nearly suppressed.
The spores are sub-globose, amber-colored, faintly trivittate, and have a finely pustulated or granular surface.
In respect to the narrow herbaceous involucre this fern comes nearest to Cheilanthes lanuginosa, of Nuttall, figured in “Ferns of North America.” It has, however, much larger fronds; and the copious, though narrow scales of the stalk, as well as the scales of the rachises, will readily distinguish it.
It is among the Ferns which have been cultivated by Hon. J. Warren Merrill, though I am not informed what are its special needs in the way of soil, moisture, etc.