Anyone who has seen this odd fern growing in its native haunts will probably concur in the opinion held by some, that while it is looked upon as one of the rarest of ferns its small size and its habit of growing in the midst of other low plants have no doubt caused it to be passed over by collectors in many regions where it really exists. This should be an encouragement to collectors to keep the fern in mind in their field excursions with a view to adding new stations for it to those now known. The finding of a rare plant in a new locality is always a source of especial pleasure to the discoverer, aside from being an item of value to the botanist in general.

Schizaea pusilla was first collected early in this century at Quaker Bridge, N. J. about thirty-five miles east of Philadelphia. The spot is a desolate looking place in the wildest of the “pine barrens” where a branch of the Atsion river flows through marshy lowlands and cedar swamps. Here amid sedge grasses, mosses, Lycopodiums, Droseras and wild cranberry vines the little treasure has been collected. But though I have hunted for it more than once my eyes have never been sharp enough to detect its fronds in this locality.

In October of last year, however, a good friend guided me to another place in New Jersey where he knew it to be growing and there we found it. It was a small open spot in the pine barrens, low and damp. In the white sand grew patches of low grasses, mosses, Lycopodium Carolinianum, L. inundatum and Pyxidanthera barbata, besides several small ericaceous plants and some larger shrubs, such as scrub oaks, sumacs etc. Close by was a little stream and just beyond that a bog. Although we knew that Schizaea grew within a few feet of the path in which we stood, it required the closest kind of a search, with eyes at the level of our knees before a specimen was detected. The sterile fronds, curled like corkscrews, grew in little tufts and were more readily visible than the fertile spikes which were less numerous and together with the slender stipes were of a brown color hardly distinguishable from the capsules of the mosses and the maturing stems of the grasses which grew all about. Lying flat upon the earth with face within a few inches of the ground was found the most satisfactory plan of search. Down there all the individual plants looked bigger and a sidelong glance brought the fertile clusters more prominently into view. When the sight got accustomed to the miniature jungle, quite a number of specimens were found but the fern could hardly be said to be plentiful and all that we gathered were within a radius of a couple of yards.

This seems, indeed to be one of the plants whose whereabouts are oftenest revealed by what we are wont to term a “happy accident” as for instance, when we are lying stretched on the ground, resting, or as we stoop, at lunch, to crack an egg on the toe of our shoe. I know of one excellent collector who spent a whole day looking for it diligently in what he thought to be a likely spot but without success when finally, just before the time for return came, as he was half crouching on the ground, scarcely thinking now of Schizaea, its fronds suddenly flashed upon his sight, right at his feet.

The sterile fronds of Schizaea pusilla are evergreen so the collector may perhaps best detect it in winter selecting days for his search when the ground is pretty clear of snow. The surrounding vegetation being at that time dead the little corkscrew-like fronds stand out more prominently. The fertile fronds die before winter sets in but their brown stalks frequently nevertheless remain standing long after.—C. F. Saunders in Linnaean Fern Bulletin, Vol. 4.