County Distribution of Ferns and Fern Allies in Rhode Island

Abstract

that by Churchill, et al. (1928, 1933). The Pteridophyta are included in The Flora of Vermont (Dole, 1937) and in Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of Connecticut Growing without Cultivation (Graves, et al., 1910; Harger, 1930). The most recent publication concerning the ferns of Rhode Island (Wright and Crandall, 1941) is an unannotated list. It excluded the fern allies and gave no information on county distribution. In this paper the list of ferns and fern allies has been brought upto-date and county records have been compiled from existing herbarium records and from my field collections. Specimens of the ferns and fern allies noted in this paper are deposited in one of the following herbaria: University of Rhode Island, University of Connecticut, Gray Herbarium, Brown University, Reed Herbarium in Baltimore, and many of the specimens collected by me are in the herbarium at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Lynchburg, Virginia. Most of the fern specimens in the herbaria checked were collected in the latter part of the 19th century or during the first two decades of the 20th century. Since there are no recent records for some of the ferns and since there have been many changes caused by highway con-