12 



OUR COMMON FERNS. 



The Lady Fern {Athyviiini filix focmina). 



The Lady Fern is one ot our commonest species 

 wherever fairly damp soil conditions prevail in conjunction 

 with shade. Although a robust grower by nature, its 

 fronds are too delicate in texture to enable it to stand wind 

 and drought, but in moist, shady habitats in woods and 

 glens, and especially in the vicinity of water, we may find 

 it growing in huge shoulder-high clumps. Where the rain- 

 fall is pretty plentiful we may also see it lining the roadside 

 ditches in quantity, and here we shall, if we examine the 

 specimens closely, find that it is by no means an easy task 

 to describe the normal form precisely. In a general way, 

 however, we may describe it as having a tripinnate or 

 thrice-divided frond of a broad lance shape, commencing 

 with a short succulent stalk of varying colour, green as a 

 rule, but reddish occasionally. These fronds spring from 

 a substantial caudex of the crown persuasion, in a some- 

 what irregular manner, not forming a definite circlet like 

 the Male or Shield Ferns, though when they rise the 

 unfolding tips form hooks a la Alale Fern, but a little more 

 twisted, so that they do not imitate croziers very closely. 

 The amount of dissection, or fine cutting, varies greatly, 

 and depends very much on the environment, and in general 

 detail the species is so variable that it is often difficult, or 

 even impossible, to match the fronds of any two plants 

 even where they may be growing in rows along the road- 

 side ditches. The fructification, or the way the spore heaps 

 are borne on the backs of the fronds, is also indefinite, 

 consisting of small, roundish patches of a more or less 

 horseshoe shape with a tiny ragged indusium, or spore 

 cover, in the indentation. Indefinite, however, as this is, 

 it renders it easily distinguishable from Lastreas or 

 Polystichums, since in these cases the cover is round, or 

 kidney-shaped, and not ragged at all. 



Some botanists have allocated the Lady Fern to the 



