(4) Smooth Woodsia. Woodsia Glabélla
Fronds two to five inches high, very delicate, linear, pinnate. Pinnæ remote at the base, roundish-ovate, very obtuse with a few crenate lobes. Stipes jointed, straw-colored. Hairs of the indusium few and minute.
On moist, mossy, mostly calcareous rocks, northern New England, Mount Mansfield, Willoughby, and Bakersfield Ledge, Vt., Gorham, N.H., also Newfoundland, New York, and far to the northwest. Not very common. It differs from the alpine species by the absence of scales above the joint. As the name implies, the plant is smooth, except for the chaffy scales at or near the rootstock, which mark all the Woodsias, and many other ferns, and which serve as a protective covering against sudden changes in extremes of heat and cold.