14 BRITISH FERNS. 



our ferns ; there is scarcely a heath, common, wood, or forest in 

 any part of the United Kingdom, in which it does not make its 

 appearance : its presence in great abundance is said to indicate 

 poverty in the soil, but I am inclined to think that its absence 

 from rich and highly cultivated land is rather to be attributed 

 to the effects of the plough and hoe, than to any quality of the 

 soil. It is one of those truly wild plants which fly from man, 

 and take refuge in wastes and wildernesses. Its size is very 

 unequal ; it varies in height from ten or twelve inches to as 

 many feet, but its average may be stated at three feet. In 

 thick shady woods, having a moist soil, it grows to an enormous 

 size; but in dry, gravelly, or sandy soils, it becomes very 

 diminutive. 



The roots are brown, fibrous, and tomentous. The rhizoma is 

 brown, velvety, and most extensively and rapidly creeping ; it 

 generally runs in a nearly horizontal direction, but sometimes 

 dips deeply and almost perpendicularly. When the London and 

 Croydon Railway was in progress, I found in the New Cross 

 cutting great abundance of these rhizomata in a decayed state, 

 some of them extended to a perpendicular depth of fifteen feet. 

 Whenever this fern has stood unmolested for a long series of 

 years, the soil becomes filled with a complete net-work of its 

 rhizomata. The young fronds make their first appearance in 

 May, they are extremely tender, and the first shoots are almost 

 invariably destroyed by the late frosts of spring ; I have seen 

 them cut down to the surface of the ground as late as the 20th 

 of May. The young fronds come up bent or doubled, the leafy 

 portion being pressed against the rachis, and not curled in a ring 

 or circinate as we find it in most of our other ferns : the cut at 

 the head of the preceding page shows a number of young fronds 

 in various stages of development, and also the mode in which 

 they spring from the rhizoma. The portion of the rachis below 

 the ground is of a dark brown colour, velvety, and considerably 

 stouter than the portion above ground ; it closely resembles the 

 rhizoma in its general appearance. When this incrassated 

 portion of the rachis is cut through, either in a direct or oblique 

 direction, the section bears a regular figure, as represented in 

 the annexed cut, the left-hand section 

 being direct, the right-hand oblique. 

 This figure is by many said to represent 

 an oak tree, and is called King Charles in the Oak ; by others it 



