Beech fern, home

Where is a good field botanist when I need one? On yet another walk to the back woods to release yet another mouse trapped in the Prius, I spent a good part of the trek looking at ferns and mushrooms, organisms that I need a lot of help with to identify beyond general terms. This fern I instantly knew as one I'd seen before but couldn't immediately name. It was clearly lacy, so it belonged in the Thrice-Cut group, with divided pinnules that were toothed. The bottom-most leaflets, which, botanically, are called pinna, angled backwards in which I knew to be an important characteristic, and all the leaf parts were joined to stems, a trait I also knew was diagnostic. I took some pictures, but this time, my hands free of a dog leash, I unearthed one entire fern plant to examine thoroughly at home. I'm trying to really learn the ferns this year, so, field guides, magnifying glass, and computer—for web image and data checking—close at hand, I waded in to the taxonomic fray and, after a fair amount of very pleasant intellectual toil and paying special particular attention to whether the lowest pair of pinna were the longest of all and were winged at the stem, a.k.a, rachis, or were otherwise, I went with: they were. That, bolstered by the fact that they were growing on dry land, led me to Broad Beech Fern. Praise be, a new fern in the collection.