POLYSTirnUM AXGT'LAllE. 



This widely distributed British species is a most lovely Fern. 

 Ricli dark green in colour, it contrasts well with the pale 

 green of the Polypodium dryopteris ; and retaining its fronds 

 throughout the winter, it is necessarily a desirable species to 

 be extensively cultivated in our Ferneries. Of late years many 

 remarkable varieties have been found growing wild, or have 

 been raised from spores; so that the forms put on in the fronds 

 of one or other of the varieties are extensive, and many of them 

 exceedingly beautiful. We have them large in size, or very 

 dwarf, we have the broad-fronded, and narrow-fronded. The 

 pinnules large, and more or less circular, and small and almost 

 linear. We have the almost undivided pinnae and pinnules, 

 and those that are extensively and profoundly divided. There 

 are varieties branching from the base, others from the apex, 

 the apices of the fronds and of the pinnae are multifid, or 

 crested, others proliferous, in short there is a great departure 

 from the normal form in many of the varieties. Some of the 

 forms of Polystichum angulare approach Polystichum aculeatum, 

 so as to make it difficult to state where P. angulare ends and 

 P. aculeatum begins; the latter Fern differs very much from the 

 former in one respect, being almost without variation in form, 

 and singularly constant in its characters. 



Mr. WoUaston, of Chisselhurst, has paid a considerable amount 

 of attention to this Fern, and has a very fine collection of its 

 varieties; and Mr. James, of Vauvert, and Mr. Monkman, of 

 Malton, amongst amateurs; and Messrs. Sim, of Foot's Cray, 

 and Messrs. Stansfield, of Todmorden, Nurserymen, have some 

 fine varieties. 



Nearly eighty years ago our Cryptogamic botanists were 

 mindful of the few varieties of British Ferns that had then 

 been discovered. James Bolton, of Halifax, in his "Filices 

 Britannica," — "An History of the British Proper Ferns," men- 

 tions on the title-page, *'New Figures of all the Species and 

 Varieties;" and in his "Introduction," written in August, 1785, 

 he says, "For the satisfaction of those who desire further in- 

 formation, I have figured several varieties in Tab. !:?," and he 

 goes on to enumerate them, namely, "In Ophioylossum tulyatum 

 there is a variety which produces several seed-spikes. In 

 Asplenium tricJiomanes there is a variety having the leaves 

 divided into several lobes, which are crenated on the extremities 



