200 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL, SOCIETY, 



fine or coarse fibres growing downward from the rootstock are the 

 true roots. The leafy branches growing upward from the root- 

 stock are the fronds, a frond being an entire leaf, whether divided 

 or undivided, and with or without a special stalk. AVhen undivided 

 and without a stalk it is said to be entire and sessile ; when having 

 a stalk the latter is called the stipes, and the expanding green por- 

 tion, whether entire or compounded, the lamina; when the lamina 

 is divided the central stalks or ribs, running through the divided 

 portions, are called the rachises ; all of these terms being merely 

 special ones for designating the different parts of a frond. The 

 term frond is generally used in a double sense which is often con- 

 fusing and misleading, but I think that it ought to be used onW in 

 one, and that the sense in which I use it here, — that is, to mean 

 the entire leaf, whether with or without a stalk, and not in a sense 

 that would lead one to suppose that it is at any time distinct from 

 its own stalk. 



AYe have seen that reproduction among ferns occurs naturally 

 through the medium of spore dissemination, but there are other 

 ways no less interesting. Many ferns multiply by means of what 

 are called viviparous buds evolved from the epidermal cells of the 

 lamina, or rachis, and such buds develop directW into new plants. 

 The Walking fern is a well-known example of this, the prolonged 

 apices bending over and rooting at their tips, and forming close 

 mats as the young plants creep along. 



A Mexican variet}^ of Aspleyiium Trkhomanea is remarkably 

 proliferous in this way, as you will see b}' the illustration of it 

 among the fern photographs on the board, and the late J. Warren 

 Merrill, Avho was an ardent lover and cultivator of our native ferns, 

 succeeded in multiplying his plants of that rare and curious fern, 

 Asplenium ebejioides, by taking advantage of this habit. Indeed, 

 among the Spleenworts the occurrence of these adventitious buds 

 is not onlj' frequent, but some species are especially proliferous in 

 that direction. I have counted as many as twenty or more tiny 

 plantlets sprouting from such buds on a single frond of Asplenrwm 

 Ghnnei, a small fern not over five inches tall. 



Still another mode of propagation is by means of small bulbs 

 produced on tlie fronds much in the same way as the bulbs are pro- 

 duced on the common tiger lily of our gardens. A notable instance 

 of this is seen in our liladder fern, CystojUeris bidbifera, which pro- 

 duces small bulbs that fall off when matured and, germinating, 



