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7. CLIMBING FERN. CREEPING FERN. HARTFORD FERN
Lygodium palmatum
Massachusetts and southward, in moist thickets and open woods. Stalks slender and twining.
Fronds.—Climbing and twining, one to three feet long, divided into lobed, rounded, heart-shaped, short-stalked segments; fruit-clusters, growing at the summit of the frond, ripening in September.The Climbing Fern is still found occasionally in moist thickets and open woods from Massachusetts southward, but at one time it was picked so recklessly for decorative purposes that it was almost exterminated.
In 1869 the legislature of Connecticut passed for its protection a special law which was embodied in the revision of the statutes of 1875, "perhaps the
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