CHAPTER 8 



POLTPODIUM VULGARE 



In the first draft of this manuscript one paragraph at the end of Chapter 7 was to have 

 been devoted to the last of the higher British ferns, Polypodium, and the inclusion of a 

 photograph of the chromosomes of 'Polypodium vulgare var. semilacerum' on Fig. 1230, 

 p. 123, is a reminder of that intention. As the work of writing has progressed, however, 





£a,cccljr]r. 



jpiipodium latine.gtcccoiptm's 



'Brabiccbif bcygvd biftc vcl fill 



cic3;^a3pion li.aggtccapro blf 



igaucto:it3tcjJ»faf.3a)ifbci'g.i.-^oIi 



Fig. 126. Woodcut illustration of Polypodium in the Ortus Sanitatis of 1491. From a copy in the Rylands 

 Library, Manchester. Slightly reduced. Portions of the Latin text are visible below the drawing. 



the unexpected complexity of the Polypodium story has become increasingly revealed, 

 until nothing less than a separate chapter will do justice to it even in a preliminary 

 statement, which is all that this can claim to be. In making it, however, I am on this 

 occasion drawing not merely on my own work but also on the collaborative effort of 

 my colleague Miss Davies, who has contributed very greatly to the elucidation of the 

 facts to be described below and without whom this chapter could not have been written. 

 The Common Polypody is a very familiar but at the same time a rather isolated fern. 

 It was well known to our ancestors, being mentioned in a number of medieval herbals 

 including the Ortus Sanitatis of 1491 (Fig. 126), in which the textual reference begins 



127 



