_Ptèris aquilina_. PTERÍDIUM LATIÚSCULUM[1]
[Footnote 1: The use of small capitals in the scientific names indicates in
part the newer nomenclature which many botanists are inclined to adopt.]
Fronds broadly triangular, ternate, one to three feet high or more, the
widely spreading branches twice pinnate, the lower pinnules more or less
pinnátifid. Sporangia borne in a continuous line along the lower margin
of the ultimate divisions whose reflexed edges form the indusium. (Greek,
_pteron_, a wing, the feathery fronds suggesting the wings of a bird.)
[Illustration: Common Bracken or Brake, a Sterile Frond. _Pteris aquilina_
(Providence County, R.I.)]
[Illustration: A Fertile Frond of Common Bracken. _Pteris aquilina_
(Suffolk County, Mass.)]
"The heath this night must be my bed,
The bracken curtain for my head."
SCOTT.
The outlines of the young bracken resemble the little oak fern. It
flourishes in thickets and open pastures, often with poor soil and scant
shade. It is found in all parts of the world, and is said to be the most
common of all our North American ferns. In a cross section of the mature
stipe superstition sees "the devil's hoof" and "King Charles in the oak,"
and any one may see or think he sees the outlines of an oak tree. It was
the bracken, or eagle fern, as some call it, which was supposed to bear the
mysterious "fern seed," but only on midsummer eve (St. John's eve).
"But on St. John's mysterious night,
Confest the mystic fern seed fell."
This enabled its possessor to walk invisible.
"We have the receipt for fern-seed,
We walk invisible."
SHAKESPEARE.
The word brake or bracken is one of the many plant names from which some of
our English surnames are derived, as Brack, Breck, Brackenridge, etc.,
and fern (meaning the bracken) is seen in Fern, Fearns, Fernham, Fernel,
Fernside, Farnsworth, etc. Also, in names of places as Ferney, Ferndale,
Fernwood, and others. Although the bracken is coarse and common, it makes a
desirable background for rockeries, or other fern masses. The young ferns
should be transplanted in early spring with as much of the long, running
rootstock as possible.
Var. _pseudocaudàta_ has longer, narrower and more distant pinnules, and is
a common southern form.
[Illustration: Var. _pseudocaudata_]