In Pursuit of the Serpentine Maidenhair Fern: Following Fernald on the Pages of Rhodora

To a botanist who is familiar with the Maidenhair Fern, Adiantum pedatum, of rich deciduous woods of New England and the Alleghenies, and who looks upon that species as the northernmost American representative of a large tropical and subtropical genus, it is a great surprise to find on the Shickshock Mountains of the Gaspé Peninsula a beautiful Adiantum covering hundreds of acres of alpine tableland. There, on the naked tableland of Mt. Albert and along the ice-cold streams of the alpine district, is an Adiantum forming broad bands of blue-green wherever the water from the cold bogs or melting snow-fields trickles through crevices of the greenish-brown serpentine. —Fernald 1905, Rhodora 7:190–192