IIQ 



DWARF BRITISH FERNS.* 



There is certainly no class of plants better fitted for 

 household pets than the many dwarf forms of British 

 Ferns, which have been produced by sporting from the 

 normally large species, and to these may of course be 

 added several species which are naturally of diminutive 

 stature. The former class is, however, the more inter- 

 esting and better adapted for home collections, since to it 

 belong, as a rule, species which are of the easiest possible 

 culture, whilst the naturally small species, being mostly 

 rock or wall Ferns, demand generally special treatment, 

 and are much more apt to perish by confinement or over- 

 watering. 



Few people — in fact, none outside the coterie of British 

 Fern specialists — know that a small table or stage facing 

 a north window could accommodate a score or two of the 

 dwarf, congested, crimped, and curly varieties of Ferns 

 which we have in view, a space, in fact, in which a single 

 full-grown normal specimen would be "cribbed, cabined, 

 and confined." 



As a special example of this sort, we may instance the 

 ordinary crested male Fern [Lastveap. mas. cvistata), which, 

 if grown properly, will form a huge shuttlecock of beauti- 

 fully tasselled fronds, which it forms in June, fully 4 feet in 

 height from the top of the trunk, and which may be itself 

 a couple of feet high ; the spread of the crown will be also 

 4 or 5 feet in diameter. At the other end of the scale, in 

 precisely the same species, we have the tiny L. /. m. 

 ■vamulosissima, more like a very small Parsley plant than 

 anything else ; the little fronds 4 or 5 inches long at the 

 utmost, being divided and divided ad infinitum. A plant of 

 this has eventually assumed a much larger size, forming 

 bushy tufts nearly a foot high, but still dwarf in comparison 

 with the normal. In this same species we have L. /. ;;;. 

 -cvispa, 5 or 6 inches high, L. f. m. crispa cvistata, a tasselled 



* By permission of the Gardeners' Chronicle. 



