| GROUP I | STERILE AND FERTILE FRONDS TOTALLY UNLIKE; |
but because their fruiting fronds are somewhat flower-like in appearance. There are three species of Osmunda: the Cinnamon Fern, O. cinnamomea; the Royal Fern, O. regalis; and the Interrupted Fern, O. Claytoniana. All three are beautiful and striking plants, producing their spores in May or June, and conspicuous by reason of their luxuriant growth and flower-like fruit clusters.
The Osmundas are easily cultivated, and group themselves effectively in shaded corners of the garden. They need plenty of water, and thrive best in a mixture of swamp-muck and fine loam.
4. CURLY GRASS
Schizæa pusilla
Pine barrens of New Jersey.
Sterile fronds.—Hardly an inch long, linear, slender, flattened, curly.
Fertile fronds.—Taller than the sterile fronds (three or four inches in height), slender, with from four to six pairs of fruit-bearing pinnæ in September.
Save in the herbarium I have never seen this very local little plant, which is found in certain parts of New Jersey. Gray assigns it to "low grounds, pine barrens," while Dr. Eaton attributes it to the "drier parts of sphagnous swamps among white cedars."
In my lack of personal knowledge of Schizæa, I venture to quote from that excellent little quarterly, the Fern Bulletin, the following passage from an
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