The Fern Lover's Companion · Chapter 14THE BLADDER FERNS. Cystópteris
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"Mark ye the ferns that clothe these dripping rocks, Their hair-like stalks, though trembling 'neath the shock Of falling spraydrops, rooted firmly there."
The bladder ferns are a dainty, rock-loving family partial to a limestone soil. (The Greek name cystópteris means bladder fern, so called in allusion to the hood-shaped indusium.)
Fronds lanceolate, elongated, one to three feet long, twice pinnate. Pinnæ lanceolate-oblong, pointed, horizontal, the lowest pair longest. Rachis and pinnæ often bearing bulblets beneath. Pinnules toothed or deeply lobed. Indusium short, truncate on the free side. Stipe short.
[Illustration: Bulblet Bladder Fern. Cystopteris bulbifera (Willoughby, Vt., 1904, G.H.T.)]
[Illustration: Bulblet Bladder Fern. Cystopteris bulbifera]
One of the most graceful and attractive of our native ferns; an object of beauty, whether standing alone or massed with other growths. It is very easily cultivated and one of the best for draping. "We may drape our homes by the yard," says Woolson, "with the most graceful and filmy of our common ferns, the bladder fern." This fern and the maidenhair were introduced into Europe in 1628 by John Tradescant, the first from America.
It delights in shaded ravines and dripping hillsides in limestone districts. While producing spores freely it seems to propagate its species mainly by bulblets, which, falling into a moist soil, at once send out a pair of growing roots, while a tiny frond starts to uncoil from the heart of the bulb. Mt. Toby, Mass., Willoughby Mountain, Vt., calcareous regions in Maine, and west of the Connecticut River, Newfoundland to Manitoba, Wisconsin and Iowa; south to northern Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas.
Stipe long and brittle. Fronds oblong-lanceolate, five to twelve inches long, twice pinnate, the pinnæ often pinnatifid or cut-toothed, ovate-lanceolate, decurrent on the winged rachis. Indusium appearing acute at the free end. Very variable in the cutting of the pinnules.
The fragile bladder fern, as it is often called, and which the name frágilis suggests, is the earliest to appear in the spring, and the first to disappear, as by the end of July it has discharged its spores and withered away. Often, however, a new crop springs up by the last of August, as if Nature were renewing her youth. In outline the fragile bladder fern suggests the blunt-lobed Woodsia, but in the latter the pinnæ and pinnules are usually broader and blunter, and its indusium splits into jagged lobes. Rather common in damp, shady places where rocks abound. In one form or another, found nearly throughout the world though only on mountains in the tropics.
[Illustration: Fragile Bladder Fern, Fruited Portion]
[Illustration: Fragile Bladder Fern. Cystopteris fragilis (Wakefield, Mass.)]