158 FERNS IN THEIR HOMES AND OURS. 



in the fern-house wherever they are allowed to 

 grow, whether on sand or on earth. It has been 

 the writer's practice to allow this pretty Selaginella 

 to take its own course, and to cover all the spaces 

 between the pots on the sanded shelves, the earth 

 among the larger pots in a central bed, and what- 

 ever space it might find on the greenhouse paths. 

 The professional gardener would doubtless think 

 this a "weedy" proceeding: but we do not all 

 care to see the unrelieved primness of a too well- 

 ordered house ; and besides, those of us who have 

 but a small place at best prefer to keep it, as it 

 were, as a large fern-case which we can enter and 

 examine, rather than to arrange it more exactly as 

 a collection, and provoke the comparison of its 

 minuteness to the magnificent establishments of 

 our wealthy neighbors. 



Selaginellas may be divided, or their cuttings 

 rooted, at any time. Many species will be found 

 to come up freely from the spores in spring and 

 fall. The fruit-spike, bearing its two kinds of 

 spores, may be discovered at the tips of the little 

 branches on the older fronds. They are of the 

 same green color as the ordinary divisions of the 

 frond, only more dense and angular. Figures 

 illustrating the fruiting and reproduction of Sela- 

 ginellas may be referred to at p. 400 of Sachs's 

 "Text-Book of Botany," and p. 90 in LeMaout and 

 Decaisne's large work mentioned in Chapter IV. 



