Gradually, very gradually, I'm getting better with the ferns. I probably know at least a dozen pretty darn well, which is to say, I can rattle off the common name... the correct common name... whenever I see the plant. This is one of those in the "I know it" camp, so when I spotted the evergreen, twice-cut fern with leathery leaves, I strongly suspected that I was looking at Dryopteris marginalis, the Marginal Woodfern. The first time I heard the common name, I laughed and wondered why this poor plant had been marginalized. It looked like a perfectly fine fern to me and, no doubt, an important player in All Things Pteridophyta. A botanist friend put me to rights. "Turn the leaf over and look at the spore dots," I was gently told. "See? They're all arrayed along the margins of the leaves, hence the name." The embarrassment eventually wore off; the identity of the marginal plant, however, has never faded away.