55 



character. Broadly speaking, it falls into two sections,, 

 flat fan-like division and bunch division. The flat cresting 

 may be roughly graded thus: simple forking " furcatum " 

 or " furcans," confined to two or three divisions, digitatum 

 or fingered up to five or six, polydactylum up to ten, 

 multifurcatum up to a score, all these divisions terminating 

 in points and not dividing again, and all spreading in the 

 same plane — fan-fashion. If the primary divisions fork 

 again, we get true cristate or crested forms, and, still, 

 adhering to the flat expansion, we may term thetn 

 cristulatum, cristatum, or, in the case of divided ferns, 

 percristatum, if the pinnules as well as the frond tip and 

 pinnae are crested. When the flat mode of expansion is 

 replaced by a sort of radiating division producing tufts or 

 bunches, they become corymbiferous — " corymbiferum," 

 and when these are large and heavy, the " grandiceps " 

 form is attained, provided the terminal bunch of the frond 

 is so characterized. An extreme form of this, producing 

 dense ball-like crests, may be termed globosum. All these 

 terms apply to fronds whose mid-ribs are not otherwise 

 divided than at the tips, but when these split up lower 

 down into branches, this character is indicated by ramosum, 

 ramosissimum, ramulosissimum, or, in extreme cases, con- 

 glomeratum. This ramose character is indicated in 

 compound varieties, i.e. in which other characters occur 

 in conjunction with it, either by the prefix ramo or the 

 addition of the names of the more developed grades- 

 mentioned above, thus ramo-digitatum or muricatum, 

 ram.ulosissimum. 



These rules will cover a very large range of forms as a 

 guide to finders or raisers, but it must be remembered that 

 fern species have been endowed by their botanical godfathers 

 with names indicating different sexes, and since these sexes 

 are purely imaginary, in those terrible synonyms which are 

 the bane of all studious plant-lovers, one and the same 

 species may have been christened, say, John by one god- 

 father, and Jenny by another. Our common Male Fern,. 



