85 



compared with Dichsonias, Cyatheas, and others of the Tree- 

 fern tribe, is yet very handsome, having a trunk of the 

 height described, surmounted with some fifteen or sixteen 

 fronds between 4 feet and 5 feet long, and beautifully 

 tasselled at all terminals. 



In these Tree-ferns we have examples of what we may 

 term individual longevity of the most distinct type. In 

 many other species, what may be termed pseudo-trunks 

 are formed, the caudex or root-stock also producing circles 

 of fronds from their growing apices, but instead of rising 

 perpendicularly they creep more or less horizontally, or 

 if, as with, for instance, the Lady Fern (Athyrium filix 

 fcBmina), they do lift perpendicularly, they split up by 

 fusion, and do not rise to any great height. In such cases, 

 however, the individual crowns last for a great many years 

 — an indefinite number indeed, and during the whole time, 

 or at any rate, as long as the owner exists to do so, he can 

 individualise a plant by indicating a definite crown as of 

 such and such an age. 



There are, however, an immense number of ferns which 

 grow more indefinitely by having creeping, branching 

 rhizomes or root-stocks, or caespitose or bunchy ones from 

 which the fronds, in the first class, rise singly from growing 

 tops, or, in the second class, from offsets or lateral buds, 

 the result in either case being successional growths without 

 a definite individual central crown. As regards longevity, 

 however, the result is the same, for such plants persist, at 

 any rate as individual specimens, without any definite life 

 limit, and as a matter of fact, by that mode of growth are 

 not handicapped in course of time by the risk of over- 

 toppling. In point of fact, with ferns, as with flowering 

 plants, it is the frond or leaf which is really the individual, 

 the plant itself representing a community, and as in a 

 human community, though the life of the individual may 

 be transient, given healthy conditions the community 

 persists for indefinite periods. C. T. D. 



