44 
Among these steps were the providing of Plant Sanctuaries (just 
as we already have bird sanctuaries), and the Propagation of 
some of the rarer species with the idea of distributing seeds and 
young plants, similar to the way in which the State now dis- 
tributes fish spawn to stock lakes and streams. 
As a step in this direction, Dr. Benedict, the author of the 
Leaflet, began during the fall of 1925 to raise, from spores, plants 
of the very rare Hart’s Tongue Fern (Scolopendrium vulgare). 
A note has been published in the American Fern Journal stating 
that the Brooklyn Botanic Garden expects shortly to be prepared 
to distribute plants of this fern to anyone who will endeavor to 
grow them under cultivation, or try to naturalize them in new 
habitats. If successful, this venture will serve, not only to 
increase the population of this particular species, but also to 
demonstrate the feasibility of this method as one of the means of 
conserving forms in danger of extinction.! 
here are now growing at the Garden about 1,000 young 
plants (‘‘sporelings”’), and this is, perhaps, nearly, if not quite, 
equal to the total number of plants now growing wild in New 
York State. 
This fern is one of our rarest wild plants, being known in the 
United States only in two States (Tennessee and New York), 
and in New York State only in two (adjacent) counties, Onondaga 
County (near Jamesville) and Madison County (at Chittenango 
Falls, near Cazenovia Lake). . 
Provision has been made for the growing of other native wild 
plants in our Native Wild Flower Section, and before long it is 
hoped and anticipated that we may be able to offer seeds or 
other propagating material of a large number of species. 
The Famous Weeping Beech of Flushing —Early in 1925 the 
plot of land known as the “Jackson Estate,” Flushing, Borough 
of Queens, was offered for sale in order to close the estate, and 
plans had been started to erect a large apartment house on the 
~ 1In this connection it is of interest to recall that, as early as 1683, Robert 
Morison, the first professor of botany at Oxford University (England), and a 
contemporary of Linnaeus, germinated spores of the Hart’s Tongue fern. 
These spores were erroneously supposed to be seeds, and therefore Morison 
thought the prothallia to which they give rise were seedleaves or cotyledons. 
This experiment with the Hart’s Tongue fern was the first attempt of which 
we have record to raise ferns from spores. 
