51�Թ�

The bladder fern is propagated in part from its bulblets, while the walking leaf bends over to the earth and roots at the tip.

It is one of our most graceful and delicate species, its long-tapering outline suggesting the bulblet bladder fern.

The bladder ferns are a dainty, rock-loving family partial to a limestone soil.

"We may drape our homes by the yard," says Woolson, "with the most graceful and filmy of our common ferns, the bladder fern."

In outline the fragile bladder fern suggests the blunt-lobed Woodsia, but in the latter the pinnæ and pinnules are usually broader and blunter, and its indusium splits into jagged lobes.