fernseed

For hardly, and then only in a fortunate hour, to one whose years and feelings have been interwoven with his own, will even a healthy man tell the tale of his hidden emotion; and mine is the deeper reticence of a habit which has ever held closely to the recipe of fernseed.

Apologia Diffidentis 1905

Like Big Pete, the witch-bear, the ptarmigan and the stinging insects, the mountains themselves had joined in the weird game and were donning their fernseed caps of invisibility.

The Black Wolf Pack Daniel Carter Beard 1895