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plant is of course perennial, though only to be found during the
spring and summer, as it is mature (in England certainly) in
July, and soon afterwards withers away.
My finest American specimens are from Nipigon Bay, Lake
Superior, collected by Mr. J . Macoun, and presented to me, together
with others from various places in Canada, by Mr. Watt of
Montreal. The Nipigon-Bay plants are finer and larger than the
average European specimens, being fully nine inches long, the
sterile segment with five pairs of ample pinnæ, and the fruiting
one fully tripinnate. The Colorado plants are small, but clearly
of this species. In the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for
October, 1877, Mr. George E . Davenport announces the discovery
of the moonwort near Syracuse, N.Y., by Miss Jane Hosmer,
Mr. E. W. Mimday, and Mrs. Stiles M. Rust, and describes a
remarkable form with very distant, alternate, rounded lobes. Mr.
Davenport has favored me with one of the Syracuse specimens,
and with drawings of some of the others.
The moonwort was anciently employed in alchemy and
magic ; and, until a comparatively recent period, it was considered
“ singular to heal green and fresh wounds. But its virtues
were never rightly manifested unless the plant was collected by
moonlight, - -probably not an easy task.
Plate V., Fig. Botrychium Lunaria, a plant of medium size,
much like one of the Labrador specimens. The cluster of sporangia also
belongs to this species ; though in respect to the sporangia there is little
difference between several of the species of this genus.
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P l a t e V. — F ig . 2.
BO T R YCH IUM LA N C EO LA TUM , A n g s t r o m .
L an c eo la te G ra p e -F e rn .
B o t r y c h iu m l a n c e o l a t u m : — Plant two to eight inches
high, scarcely fleshy ; the common stalk slender, and bearing high
up, near the short-stalked fruiting panicle, a sessile deltoid membranaceous
once or twice pinnatifid sterile segment; divisions
few, oblique or somewhat spreading, oblong-lanceolate, straight,
acute, the base narrowed and decurrent; lowest pair much the
longest; veins forking from a mid-vein ; fertile panicle with slender
branches and seldom crowded sporangia.
Botrychmm lanceolatum. A n g s t rom , “ Botaniska Notlser, 18 5 4 , p. 6 8 ; 18 6 6 ,
PP- 3 6 , 37-” — M i ld e , N o v . Acad., Acad. Nat. Cur., xxvi., pars ii., p.
6 7 4 , t. 5 1 , f. 1 7 8 - 1 8 1 ; Fil. Eur. et. A t l, p. 1 9 7 ; Monogr. Botr.,
p. 1 3 2 , t. 8, f. I (venation). — E a t o n , in Gray’s Manual, ed. v ., p.
6 7 1 .
Osmunda lanceolata, G m e l in , “ in Nov. Comment. Acad. Petrop, x ii. ( 1 7 6 8 ) ,
p. 516, t. I I , f. I . ”
Botrychium rtUaceum, var. lanceolatum, M o o r e , Ind. Fil., p. 2 1 1 . (For
additional synonymy, consult Milde’s papers above cited.)
H a b . — Along mossy stream-banks and in moist pastures, from New
Brunswick, Rev. J. F o w l e r ; to Colorado, B r a n d e g e e . Near Bethlehem,
New Hampshire, Miss C. C. H a s k e l l . Goshen, Massachusetts, Rev. H.
G. J e su p . Orange, Connecticut, O sc a r H a r c e r . Near Utica and Syracuse,
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