94s PERNS OF THE LAKE COUNTRY 



Fern. Fern itself is old Saxon also. The Bracken 

 grows everywhere, except on chalk -(possibly not getting 

 depth there), and is the commonest of all our Ferns. 

 Over sandy wastes, on hedge banks, in warm moist 

 lanes and woods, it grows abundantly, overtopping the 

 rankest flowers, climbing among the bushes, half sup- 

 ported by them, to a height of from a couple of feet to 

 sometimes eight or ten. The caudex, thick and black- 

 ish, is usually creeping, creeping just beneath the sur- 

 face more extensively than that of any other Fern ; 

 but in some cases growing straight downwards to a 

 great depth, Mr. Newman stating that he has found it 

 even fifteen feet below the ground. The fronds appear 

 so soon as the frosts are over, coming up in little curls 

 like shepherds' crooks, or croziers ; sometimes like 

 little grey-green downy hooks stuck into the grass, the 

 upper part of the stipes not yet having burst the sur- 

 face. The young stipes is downy and soft, growing 

 angular and hard in age, spindle-shaped at the base. 

 The fronds, erroneously said sometimes to be three- 

 branched, are truly bipinnate, or tripinnate when very 

 luxuriant, the pinnae standing opposite in pairs, each 

 pair in succession becoming fully developed while the 

 main rachis is extending upward and the next pair is 

 beginning to unfold. It is only when the plant is 

 very poor that the fronds appear three-branched, the 

 development of the lower pair of branches not leaving 

 the plant energy enough to carry up its rachis and 

 produce the other pairs of pinna? which it would nor- 

 mally possess. The true habit of the plant is still more 

 clearly shown when it attains its fullest luxuriance, the 



