The broad-fronded, hardy Pteris
aquilina, the commonest of ferns, covers large areas on the floor of
the Valley. No other fern does so much for the color glory of autumn,
with its browns and reds and yellows, even after lying dead beneath
the snow all winter. It spreads a rich brown mantle over the desolate
ground in the spring before the grass has sprouted, and at the first
touch of sun-heat its young fronds come rearing up full of faith and
hope through the midst of the last year's ruins.
Of the five species of pellaea, P. Breweri is the hardiest as to
enduring high altitudes and stormy weather and at the same time it is
the most fragile of the genus. It grows in dense tufts in the clefts of
storm-beaten rocks, high up on the mountain-side on the very edge of the
fern line. It is a handsome little fern about four or five inches high,
has pale-green pinnate fronds, and shining bronze-colored stalks about
as brittle as glass. Its companions on the lower part of its range are
Cryptogramma acrostichoides and Phegopteris alpestris, the latter with
soft, delicate fronds, not in the least like those of Rock fern, though
it grows on the rocks where the snow lies longest. Pellaea Bridgesii,
with blue-green, narrow, simply-pinnate fronds, is about the same size
as Breweri and ranks next to it as a mountaineer, growing in fissures,
wet or dry, and around the edges of boulders that are resting on glacier
pavements with no fissures whatever.
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