print previewback CORINNA MCCLANAHAN SCHROEDER
Pteridomaniac
Your daughters, perhaps, have been seized with the prevailing “Pteridomania,”
and are collecting and buying ferns . . . and wrangling over unpronounceable
names of species (which seem to be different in each new Fern-book that they
buy), till the Pteridomania seems to you somewhat of a bore: and yet you
cannot deny that they find an enjoyment in it, and are more active, more
cheerful, more self-forgetful over it, than they would have been over novels
and gossip, crochet and Berlin-wool.
—by Charles Kingsley, Glaucus, 1855
How I grub in the damp woods.
Trowel in one hand—
in the other, pocketbook of fronds.
Moonwort, bracken, broad buckler,
little adder’s-tongue.
I tramp across meadow and hill and glen,
fingers combing gully and hedge bank.
Though I take only sparingly,
my cord’s ready for bundling.
My satchel’s lined with moss.
Brittle bladder fern, forked spleenwort.
How I bend for
rust-colored scales,
for the lemon scent of a native species.
How I crawl.
I reach into the crevice’s black heart
to finger a stalk.
Hard fern,
filmy fern,
lady fern.
Why shouldn’t my shoes be ooze-caked,
earth smeared on my cheeks?
I’ve slipped down muddy banks
and sidestepped along waterfalls,
my bonnet lost
chasing a ravine’s glint of evergreen.
Rue-leaved spleenwort,
tatting.
Magnifying glass clasped to my eye, I read cruciate forms,
tasseled tips, bipinnate leaves.
I classify—
serrated edges pressed to my tongue.
Bristle fern, holly fern, true maidenhair,
Woodsia.
How I multiply,
blowing clusters
of cinnamon spores
from the fronds’ undersides.
(Far better use of a specimen than pressing it in a tight
little book and calling it mine.)
Royal fern,
rustyback,
soft prickly shield.
How I shiver in this wet dress,
the air sharp
with rain worms
and rotting stumps.
Yes, how I shine. 
In the Museum of the Nineteenth Century, the
Lights Are Coming on
The Literary Scholar
Pteridomaniac