DESCRIPTIONS OF PLANTS 



i«i 



Neare London highwaie in the watery plashes at the east end of 

 the greate Comon betweene^ Sandie Chappell and Kingston, neare 

 the bridge as you ride out of the Comon by a small Cottage there. 

 I saw no flowers. — MS. f. 137. 



[A note scribbled on the back of a list of men of the Tithing of 

 . . . [name obliterated], p. 381.] 



[Goodyer first found this plant in 161 8 growing on Hounslow 

 Heath, the station quoted by Johnson. — Ger. emac. p. 418.] 



Ferns. 

 Filix mas varietates & differentiae. 4 Julii 1633 



I have observed foure sorts of Feme, by most writers esteemed 

 to be the male Feme of Dioscorides : by Angtcillaria, Gesjier, 

 Ccssalpimis, and Clusius, accounted to be the female, and so indeed 

 doe I thinke them to be, though I call them the male, with the 

 multitude. If you looke on these Femes according to their severall 

 growths and ages, you may make many more sorts of them than 

 I have done ; which I am afraid hath beene the occasion of 

 describing more sorts than indeed there are in nature. These 

 descriptions I made by them when they were in their perfect 

 growths. — MS. f. [38; Ger. emac. 11 29. 



Broad Shield-fern. Aspidiuni dilatatiim Sm. 

 Filix mas ramosa pinnulis dentatis. 4 Julii 1633 



The roots are nothing but an aboundance of small blacke hairy 

 strings, growing from the lower parts of the maine stalkes (for 

 stalkes I will call them) where those stalkes are ioyned together. 

 At the beginning of the Spring you may perceive the leaves to 

 grow forth of their folding clusters, covered with brownish scales 

 at the superficies of the earth, very closely ioyned together : 

 a young plant hath but a few leaves; an old one, ten, twelve, or 

 more : each stalke at his lower end neere the ioyning to his 

 fellowes, at his first appearing, before he is an inch long having 

 some of those blacke fibrous roots for his sustenance. The leaves 

 being at their full growth hath each of them a three-fold division, 

 as hath that Feme which is commonly called the female : the 

 maine stalke, the side branches growing from him, and the nerves 

 growing on those side branches bearing the leaves : the maine 

 stalke of that plant I describe was fully foure foot long (but there 

 are usually from one foot to foure in length) full of those brownish 

 scales, especially toward the root, firme, one side flat, the rest 

 round, naked fully one and twenty inches, to the first paire of side 

 branches. The side branches, the longest being the third paire 

 from the root, were nine inches long, and shorter and shorter 



