Spores dark, netted or wrinkled.

[Illustration: Lowland Lady Fern. ATHYRIUM ASPLENIOIDES (From the Gray
Herbarium)]

The following two forms are named by Butters:

F. TÝPICUM. The usual form frequent in eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri.

F. SUBTRIPINNÀTUM. An unusually large and rare form with triangular,
lanceolate, and pinnatifid pinnules, having blunt, oblong segments. Wet
situations in half shade. Massachusetts, West Virginia, and Virginia.

Our lowland or southern lady fern flourishes in the southern states, comes
up the Atlantic Coast until it meets the upland or northern species in
Pennsylvania and southern New England, and their identification can hardly
fail to awaken in the student a keen interest.

Our American botanists are inclined to think that the real _Athýrium
fìlix-fémina_ is not to be found in the northeastern United States, but
is rather a western species, with its habitat in California and the Rocky
Mountain region and identical with _Athýrium cyclosòrum_.

But whatever changes may occur in the scientific name of the old _Athýrium
fìlix-fémina_, the name lady fern will not change, but everywhere within
our limits it will hold its own as a familiar term.

Underwood, writing of the lady fern under the genus _Asplenium_, mentions
the form "_exìle_, small, starved specimens growing in very dry situations