^gjl'l Pitcher, Remarks on Ferns. 5 



SOME GENERAL REMARKS ON FERNS, WITH SPECIAL 



REFERENCE TO VICTORIAN SPECIES. 



By F. Pitcher. 



{Read before the Field Naturalists* Club of Victoria, 10th March, 191 3.) 



Notwithstanding the interesting and instructive description 

 of Victorian ferns which formed the valuable series of papers 

 given before this Clul) in its infancy by Mr. Chas. French, sen., 

 one of the Club's founders (published in the Southern Science 

 Record, 1880-82), and although technical records of our native 

 ferns are to be found in the " Key to Victorian Plants," since 

 published by the late Baron Sir F. von Mueller, it has been 

 thought that there is still room to put together, in one paper, 

 some notes regarding ferns generally, and having special ref- 

 erence to our local species, which might be of further value 

 and interest to present members as well as to readers of the 

 Naturalist. 



Some divisions, orders, and genera of plants stand out so 

 prominently in the vegetable kingdom as to be easily recognized 

 by the most casual observers, be they adults or juniors. Such, 

 for instance, are palms, pines, so-called gum-trees or eucalypts, 

 orchids, grasses, rushes, and ferns. Ferns, however, are so 

 strikingly distinctive that very few Victorians, at any rate, 

 are unable to at once recognize as ferns the majority of the 

 native species. This may be accounted for owing to the beauty 

 and the delicacy of their foUage, their distinctive mode of leaf 

 or frond development, and the arrangement of their repro- 

 ductive organs. It may also be, in a measure, owing to the 

 abundance of so many tree and other ferns in the innumerable 

 valleys along our creeks and rivers and on the slopes of our 

 many mountain ranges. 



What are Ferns ? 



All plants are separable into one of the two great divisions 

 of the vegetable kingdom — ^viz., phanerogams or cryptogams 

 — i.e., those with or without flowers. Ferns are included in 

 the division of cryptogams, having no real flowers, their organs 

 of reproduction being obscure. 



They may be described as plants without true leaves, con- 

 sisting of a rhizome or rooting stem, or simple trunk, emitting 

 either alternate or a terminal tuft of more or less leaf-like 

 fronds ; the fruit, known as spores, is borne on the under 

 surface or margin of the fertile fronds, which are sometimes 

 very narrow, and resemble simple or branched spikes. 



The different parts of ferns may be separately explained 

 thus : — 



