BRITISH FERNS. 11 



HARD FERN. 



LOMARIA SPICANT. Desveux, Presl, Sadler. 



Osmunda Spicant. Linneus, Bolton, Berkenhout, Lightfoot, 



Hudson. 



Blechnum Spicant. Roth, Withering. 

 Blechnum Boreale. Swartz, Smith, Hooker, Galpine, Mackay, 



Gray, Francis. 



LOCALITIES. 

 ENGLAND. "\ 



WALES. I Universally distributed over waste ground, but particularly abundant in moist and 

 SCOTLAND, f mountaimms districts. 

 IRELAND. ) 



THE limits of the genus Blechnum, in which our present plant 

 has usually been placed, appear less settled, and the characters 

 less precisely determined, than those of any other Linnean 

 group. The separation by Willdenow of the major part of the 

 species, under the name Lomaria, does not appear to have been 

 managed with that author's usual judgment. In his " Species 

 Plantarum," he retains our only British example (the Osmunda 

 Spicant of Linnaeus) in his genus Blechnum, the species of 

 which stand thus: 1. Unilaterale ; 2. Boreale (Spicant, Lin.); 

 3. Onocleoides ; and seventeen others. Presl, in his " Ten- 

 tamen Pteridographiae," removes Spicant to the genus Lomaria, 

 and places it as the type, although he describes the genus as 

 having marginal thecse, which L. Spicant certainly has not. 

 Sadler, in his little monograph of the Ferns of Hungary, &c. 

 also describes Lomaria as having marginal thecae and indusium, 

 yet gives but one species L. Spicant. Mr. Smith, of the Kew 

 Botanic Gardens, restricts the genus Blechnum to those species 

 in which the lateral veins are continued beyond the line of 

 thecae, and to the margin of the pinna ; and the genus Lomaria, 

 to those in which the lateral veins terminate in the line of 

 thecae : this character is so simple, and so readily observed in 

 nearly all the species, that I am glad to employ it in fixing our 

 British plant as a Lomaria. 



