52 Ferns and Fern Allies 



lines by Edwin Lees were really penned to the true Lady 

 Fern, still they are so very quaint and reminiscent of mid- 

 Victorian verse, that I cannot refrain from appending them 

 to this short note on the Large Lady Fern. 



" When in splendour and beauty all nature is crowned, 

 The Fern is seen curling half hid in the ground, 

 But of all the green Brackens that rise by the burn, 

 Commend me alone to the sweet Lady Fern. 



Polypodium indented stands stiff on the rock, 

 With his sori exposed to the tempest's rough shock; 

 On the wide, chilly heath Aquilina stands stern, 

 Not once to be named with the sweet Lady Fern. 



Filix-mas in a circle lifts up his green fronds, 

 And the Heath Fern delights by the bogs and the ponds ; 

 Through their shadowy tufts though with pleasure I turn, 

 The palm must still rest with the fair Lady Fern. 



Where the water is pouring forever she sits, 

 And beside her the Ouzel, the Kingfisher flits; 

 There, supreme in her beauty, beside the full urn, 

 In the shade of the rock stands the tall Lady Fern. 



Noon burns up the mountain ; but here by the fall 

 The Lady Fern flourishes graceful and tall. 

 Hours speed as thoughts rise, without any concern, 

 And float like the spray gliding past the green Fern." 



HOLLY FERN 



Polystichum Lonchitis. Fern Family 



Rootstock: short, stout, densely chaffy, bearing large brown scales. 

 Leaves: rigid, leathery, linear-lanceolate in outline, once pinnate, pinnae 

 broadly lanceolate, scythe-shaped, acute, strongly auricled on the upper 

 side, spinulose-dentate. Sori: biseriate, at length subconfluent. 



The Holly Fern has rigid evergreen leaves, each of the 

 pinnae ending in a sharp point, and having a rounded lobe 



