CHAPTER FIFTEENTH. 

 FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 



EXERCISE LXXII. 

 Ferns. 



You have often seen dense, green patches of plants, 

 more or less resembling Fig. 466, and called brakes, or 



ferns. They seem, 

 when growing, to be 

 all leaf and no stem ; 

 but you see in the 

 figure that the stem 

 is a short, under- 

 ground rhizoma. In 

 FIG. 467. some ferns the rhizo . 



ma takes a vertical 

 direction, and bears 

 a whorl or tuft of 

 foliage at the top. 

 Here it gives off sin- 

 gle leaves as it ad- 

 vances. Although, in 

 our climate, the stems 

 of ferns are found 

 creeping under- 

 ground, yet in the 

 warm climates of the 



tropics they rise in the air, sometimes forming trees, forty 



or fifty feet in height. 



FIG. 468. 



FIG. 466. 



