Impressions of the Ferns of Porto Rico

Abstract

Save a narrow strip along most of the coast Porto Rico is all hills and hollows. Except along the dry south coast, ferns are in evidence almost everywhere from sea level to the highest summits, becoming more plentiful the greater the altitude. My first day in the highlands was October 23 at Maricao, which we reached about half-past seven, after two hours' ride up the winding road through the cool morning mists, past coffee and banana groves, the roadside banks in places completely covered with ferns. After caf6 at the fonda we set out, following up the Rio Maricao, scrambling over the rocks and in and out of the water most of the way. Maricao is 1500 feet high and we ascended some five hundred feet only in the five or six miles we made up river. The beauty of that rocky stream of clear rushing water, its banks hung with strange trees and shrubs and gorgeous flowers, with ferns everywhere they could find a foothold, on rocks, on the trunks and branches of trees, was intoxicating. I met my first tree ferns here. One, some 25 feet high, a species of Alsophila, was collected in fruit. It has fronds six or eight feet long, the stout woody stipes beset with spines like a blackberry cane. On its trunk were growing Polypodium asplenifolium L., its long narrow fronds drooping over on their slender fuzzy stipes, and Trichomanes