Vacationing among Tennessee Ferns

Abstract

The old camera and tripod were stored in the back of the car; plant presses with an abundance of driers and ventilators and an old suitcase of clothes were packed in the trunk. Vacation time had arrived and with it the desire to climb the mountains of East Tennessee and collect and photograph the ferns found there. With my friend, Harry Monk, of Nashville, an indefatigable and accurate student of birds, I left Nashville on the morning of August 29, 1935. The plan was to stop along the road at any place that looked attractive and stay as long as we liked. I collected and photographed plants during the daytime and pressed them in the evening while my companion concentrated mainly on the birds. It seemed unwise to stop at the station of Scott's Spleenwort (x Asplenium ebenoides) at the Mount View School (Shaver, 1934) since it had been visited not many weeks before and found to be in an unusually flourishing condition, with only two plants present, however; or at the power plant dam at Rock Island where occurs the finest growth of Venus-hair Fern (Adiantum Capillus-Veneris) with which I am acquainted. There are masses of this fern along the bluff for perhaps three hundred yards with some of the fronds three or four feet long. The situation