FERNS. 



225 



and add thirteen pounds of loaf sugar and one pint of orange flower 

 water." — -Johnson's British Ferns, p. 11-12. 



It appears more probable that the familiar name " Maiden-hair," 

 given by the gallant old herbalists of former times, was derived from the 

 black-shining hair-like stripes, or from the soft brown covering of the 

 young rootlets, than from any imaginary virtue in the plant for promoting 

 the growth of the human hair. That singular and beautiful little plant 

 Spiranthes gracilis, owes its pretty name of Ladies' Tresses to the spiral 

 arrangement of its delicate pearly-white flowers, on the twisted stalk, 

 which suggested the idea of the ringlets of hair on a woman's head. 



Common Br.\ke — Bracken — Pteris aqiiilina, (L.) 



Though found growing so abundantly on dry, sunny wastes, and, 

 therefore, considered by many persons indicative of a poor, sterile soil, 

 this fern may also be seen flourishing exceedingly, in richly-wooded 

 thickets, and even penetrating within the interior of the forest ; proving 

 the fact that though it will live and grow in light and poor soil, it thrives 

 far better in a more generous one, where its rank, deep green, widely- 

 expanded fronds attain three times the width and height that they do 

 on that which is sterile. 



Were it less common it would excite our warmest admiration, from 

 its finely developed branching or fan-like outline, rich colour and 

 abundance of fine coffee-brown sori. There is, too, a great variety, 

 both in colour and shape, of the fronds ; some are of the most delicate 

 tender tint of green, others dark and glossy with purplish stems of 

 various shades, while some are of a rich grass-green, or again, a yellower 

 tint or bronze prevails. 



The usual form of a full-grown frond is almost triangular, divided 

 into three spreading bi-pinnate branches, in some the lower pinnules 

 of the pinna; are tw'ce or thrice deeply toothed, and then terminate 

 in a long blunt, narrow tail-Hke end ; in others the divisions are crenate 

 or simply lobed ; and in occasional plants the pinnae and pinnules are 

 crowded on the rachis and mid-rib, crisped and standing forward, 

 bluntly toothed at the edges ; the whole frond wider than long, slightly 

 pubescent beneath, and the stipes either short and thick, or the 

 divisions on long stalks, wide and spreading. This variety seems to 

 correspond in some particulars with the form decipiens of Professor 

 Lawson. I have found it in fruit as well as in the barren state. Also 

 another form, simply lanceolate, not branching ; the fruit confined to 

 the lower halves of the pinnules — not extending to the ends of the lobes 

 — probably merely a chance variety, though not very rare, as I have 



