152 The I?ish Naturalist, July, 



Windermere, to which he directed the attention of that well- 

 known I.ake District fern-hunter, Mr. Frederic Clowes, who 

 noticed its peculiar characters, and grew it in his garden for 

 some 3^ears without succeeding in identifying it. " I showed 

 it to several good botanists, but they paid no attention to it."^ 

 However, in 1859 he sent a frond to Mr. Thomas Moore of 

 Chelsea Botanic Garden, who recognized it as Braun's 

 Aspidium y'emotuniy and announced it as such before the 

 Linnean Society at a meeting on December 15 of that year.^ 

 Only a few plants were found, nor did further search reveal 

 more. Since that date, Mr. J. G. Baker^ has recorded, it as 

 found by Mr. Coward in Brathay Woods, in the same localit}^ 

 And quite recentlj^ Mr. W. B. Boyd exhibited a specimen from 

 the Ben Lomond district at a meeting of the Botanical Society 

 of Edinburgh.* 



From my own observations on the Galway plant in culti- 

 vation, I received the impression that L. remota is L. Filix-77ias 

 X spiiiulosa^ and that seems to be the general opinion. Clowes 

 saj^s *' It appears to be exactly intermediate between the two 

 species above mentioned "^ {^Filix-mas and spi?iulosa\ and 

 Boswell quotes him as saying^ " I have no doubt that L. 

 remota of Moore and Braun is a hybrid. It has been sown 

 over and over again, and alwaj^s produced L. Filix-mas var. 

 paleacea. I do not know whether L. dilatata or spinulosa has 

 ever come up from its spores." 



The Dalystown plant on the whole recalls spinulosa more 

 than Filix-mas. It is sub-evergreen, the fronds falling down 

 in autumn storms, but remaining fairly green and fresh 

 through the w^inter. The scales are concolorous like those of 

 spinulosa^ and devoid of the dark centre band characteristic 

 of those of dilatata. The caudex has the stout erect character 

 of Filix-maSy but resembles the creeping rhizome of spi7iulosa 

 in its rather rapid extension, so that, as Clowes has said, " a 

 single crown of it, if let alone, will grow up like a tree-fern." 

 The possibility of Z. rigida being a parent is ruled out, as 

 regards the Irish plant, by the non-occurrence of that species 



*F. Clowes; Lastrea remota. Phytologist^ iv., 227-229, i860. 



2 fourn. Linn. Soc, Botany, iv., 192- 194, l86o. 



3 Flora of the English Lake District, p. 240, 1885. 

 * Trans. Bot. Soc. Edinb., xxxiii., p. 281, 1907. 



^ loc, cit. fi English Botany, xii., 70, 1886. 



