76 BRITISH FERNS. 



The name of the genus comes from a Greek word, which 

 signifies dry, or unmoistened, and is applicable to these plants, 

 from their possessing in a remarkable degree the property of 

 repelling water. 



COMMON MAIDEN-HAIR FERN. [Plate VIL front fig.] 



The common Maiden-hair Fern is the Adiantum Capillus- 

 Veneris of botanists. 



It is a small evergreen species, furnished with a very short 

 creeping stem, which is clothed with small black scales, and 

 bears delicate, graceful, somewhat drooping fronds, of six 

 inches to a foot high. These fronds are usually of an irre- 

 gularly ovate form, sometimes elongate, occasionally 

 approaching to linear. The fronds are twice or thrice pin- 

 nate ; with alternate pinnae and pinnules. The ultimate 

 pinnules or leaflets are very irregular in shape, but for the 

 most part have a wedge-shaped or tapering base, and a more 

 or less rounded and oblique apex, and they have generally 

 some variation of a fan-shaped or rhomboidal outline. The 

 margin is more or less deeply lobed, the apices of the lobes 

 in the fertile pinnules being reflexed and changed into mem- 

 branous indusia, whilst the lobes of the barren fronds are 

 serrated ; their texture is thin and membranaceous, their 

 surface smooth, their colour a cheerful green. The stipes, 

 which is about half as long as the frond, and furnished with 

 a few small scales at the base, is black and shining, as also 

 are the rachides, the ultimate ramifications of which are 

 small and hair-like. 



The veins throughout the pinnules are forked on a dicbo- 

 tomous or two-branched plan, from the base upwards. The 

 sori are oblong, covered by indusia of the same form, each 

 consisting of the apex of one of the lobes of the frond, 

 changed to a membranous texture, and folded under. 



The Maiden-hair is a local plant, though it has a wide 

 geographical range. It is found here and there in the 

 warmer parts of Great Britain and Ireland, evidently pre- 

 ferring cavernous and rocky situations within the influence 

 of the sea. The same species is found in the warmer parts 

 of Europe, in Asia, in the north of Africa, and in the Canaries 

 and Cape de Verd Islands. 



It is, moreover, a tender plant, and does not thrive under 

 cultivation in the climate even of the south of England, 

 unless sheltered in a frame or greenhouse, or by being 

 covered with a glass. In a Wardian case it grows well ; and 

 attains great luxuriance in a damp hothouse. The proper 



