Undoubtedly the greatest resemblance of this fern is to the lady-fern, _Asplenium Filix-fœmina_; but that species has a very well-developed indusium, while the minute objects delineated by Mettenius scarcely deserve the name.
The stalks are clearly continuous with the root-stock; and for this reason the plant is plainly not a _Polypodium_, whatever else it may finally be determined to be.
ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS, Swartz. Fragrant Wood-Fern.
Aspidium fragrans:—Root-stock short and stout, very chaffy, with ample bright-brown glossy scales, which also abound on the short clustered stalks, and extend, diminishing in size, nearly to the top of the frond; fronds rigid-membranaceous, glandular, aromatic, four to ten inches long, six to twenty-four lines wide, lanceolate, acuminate, narrowed from the middle to the base, bipinnate; pinnæ numerous, oblong-lanceolate; pinnules many, one to two lines long, oblong, obtuse, adnate by a decurrent base, pinnately incised with very minute crenated teeth, or in smaller fronds nearly entire, the back nearly hidden by the large thin imbricating indusia, which are orbicular with a narrow sinus, and more or less toothed and glandular around the margin.
_Aspidium fragrans_, Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 51.—Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 253.—Hooker, in “Parry’s 2d Voy., App., p. 410;” Fl. Bor. Am., p. 410.—Ruprecht, Distr. Crypt. Vasc. Imp. Ross., p. 35.—Mettenius, Aspid., p. 56.—Gray, Manual, ed. 2, p. 598.—Milde, Fil. Eur. et Atlant., p. 117.
_Polypodium fragrans_, Linnæus, Sp. Pl., p. 1550.
_Polystichum fragrans_, Ledebour, “Fl. Ross., iv., p. 514.”—Maximowicz, Prim. Fl. Amur., p. 339.
_Dryopteris fragrans_, Schott, Gen. Fil., Observ. sub Polysticho.
_Nephrodium fragrans_, Richardson, “App. to Frankl. Journ., p. 753.”—Hooker & Greville, Ic. Fil., t. lxx.—Hooker, Sp. Fil., iv., p. 122.—Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 275.
_Dryopteris rubum idæum spirans_, Ammann, “Ruth., p. 251.”
Hab.—In crevices of shaded cliffs, and on mossy rocks, especially near cascades and rivulets, from Northern New England to Wisconsin, and northward to Arctic America. Also in the Caucasus, and in Siberia, Mantchooria, and Kamtschatka. Special American localities are Mount Kineo, Maine, A. H. and C. E. Smith; at Berlin Falls, the “Alpine Cascade,” and the “Gulch,” all near the White Mountains, H. Willey; Mount Mansfield, Vermont, C. G. Pringle; Lake Avalanche, Adirondack Mountains, New York, C. H. Peck; Falls of St. Croix, Wisconsin, C. C. Parry, and on the Penokee Iron Range, in the same State, Lapham; Saguenay River, Canada, D. A. Watt. It is apparently more common farther north: Sitka, Iliuliuk, Unalaska, Arakamtchetchene, Kotzebue Bay, Igloolik, Rittenbenk in Greenland, and several other places, are recorded as stations for it.