jo WAYSIDE AND WOODLAND FERNS. 



Maidenhair Spleenwort. It is also found in Jersey. On the 

 Continent it is widely distributed, except in the north ; it 

 is a plant of North and South Africa, Western Asia, and the 

 Himalaya. 



Few plants have had so many names bestowed upon them as 

 this little fern. And yet in 1568 Turner could write that he had 

 heard of no English name for it, though the ancient name of 

 Asplenum and the French (!) Ceterache were familiar to him. 

 He says : " It maye well be called in English Ceterache or 

 Miltwaste, or Finger feme, because it is no longer then a 

 manne's finger ; or Scale ferae, because it is all full of scales on 

 the inner syde." Ceterach or Chetherak is said to be of Arabic 

 origin, and probably handed down by the apothecaries, who 

 had frequently to supply it as a medicine for troubles of the 

 spleen and liver. It was said that if pigs ate the rootstock of 

 the fern it would cause their spleen (or milt) to waste away, so 

 one of its early names is Miltwaste. Du Bartas, in his '* Divine 

 Weekes," has a couplet referring to this belief : 



" The Finger-feme, which being given to swine, 

 It makes their milt to melt away in fine." 



It does not appear to have occurred to those who wrote of 

 swine eating the rootstocks, that this would be a matter of 

 some difficulty seeing that the fern is embedded between stones, 

 and therefore not accessible as a terrestrial species would be. 



Brown-back, Rusty-back, and Scale-fern are names whose 

 origin will be obvious to any one examining the plant. Stone- 

 fern is suggested by its habitat, and Saxifrage (Stone-breaker), 

 which appears in the " Crete Herball" (1526), from an idea that 

 it helped in the disintegration of the rocks, as all rock plants 

 undoubtedly do to some extent. 



