THE FLORAL WOELD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 293 



It is a good service that tlie brake or any other fern renders us 

 if it revives passages in past readings, and passages in our past life. 

 There is scarce a plant among the thousands that interest me in my 

 garden but has a tale to tell, or about which there are associated 

 remembrances which the heart will not willingly let die. It was 

 because of my intense love of this haunter of solitude that I 

 planted it in a nook of my rockery, close beside the little garden- 

 house Avhere I write during many hours daily all the summer long. 

 From my seat I look into this very nook, and I have by degrees 

 become so foscinated with it that I have had it figured, and here 

 offer it to our readers as another instalment from my garden. It 

 must be distinctly understood, however, that, although I have in- 

 dulged in a little sentiment, the subject having carried me away, 

 something practical is to be said, and that something I hope will be 

 useful. 



It is proper to state, first, that the figure does not indicate the 

 extreme luxuriance of the bracken at Stoke Newingtou. The picture 

 would have been a mere confusion, had any attempt been made to 

 represent the dense mass of gigantic fronds with which this nook is 

 filled, "When the sketch was made, therefore, an immense quantity 

 was cut away, leaving a few distinct fronds for Mr. Damman to 

 transfer to paper. It is understood that many fern-growers make 

 no progress with this fern ; it is represented that it is one of the 

 most difficult to cultivate ; that, like many of our rampant-growing 

 weeds, removal to a garden is death to it. This is all sheer nonsense ; 

 the brake grows in a variety of soils, it spreads fast, it possesses 

 an almost exhaustless vitality ; there is scarcely a garden in any part 

 of Britain but in which it would grow if treated with a little skill. 



Tiie Brake or Bracken, Pteris aquilina of Linneeus, and the 

 majority of British botanists, is a very distinct and noble fern, vary- 

 ing much in stature and character, yet easily identified under all the 

 changes to which it is subject. Its most distinct structural pecu- 

 liarity is the production of sori on the underside of the margins of 

 the pinnules. The rhizoma is thick_. velvety, and fleshy, and creeps 

 underground, so that when once the fern has established itself, it 

 spreads fast, and throws up fronds far away from the parent stool. 

 The fronds are usually of a deep green colour, the smaller fronds 

 nearly triangular, and they all branch freely and regularly ; indeed, 

 the branching character is one by which this fern may be known by 

 the most inexperienced observer, for it is the only British fern so 

 distinguished. Large fronds are usually wedge-shaped. The 

 fronds represented in the sketch attained this season a height of 

 eight feet. On poor soils the growth is stunted ; and many readers 

 of this will remember that the lovely patches of bracken on Hamp- 

 stead Heath are not more tlian two feet high. The hard, glossy, 

 leathery texture of the fronds contributes in a great degree to the 

 beauty and distinctness of this fern ; but its fine, deep green, glossy 

 hue in summer is far surpassed by its beautiful tawny hue in 

 autumn. 



I have never purchased or collected this plant. It has, in fact, 

 forced itself upon me, for it has always been a weed amongst the 



