HISTORY OF BRITISH PERNS. 



ASPLENIUM LANCEOLATUM, ffu&on. The Lanceolate 

 Spleenwort. (Plate XII. fig. 1.) 



We have here an evergreen Eern of variable size, seldom 

 in cultivation having the vigour which it exhibits near the 

 coast in our south-western counties, and especially in the 

 Channel Islands. As might be expected, it evidently re- 

 quires a mild and sheltered climate, so that in a hot-house, 

 where the temperature is not kept too high, it grows freely, 

 which can seldom be said of plants kept in a cold frame in 

 the climate of London, and never of plants fully exposed. 

 Under the least favourable circumstances its fronds are 

 from four to six inches long; but under the most favourable 

 conditions they reach the length of a foot, or even a foot 

 and a half. The fronds are of a lanceolate form, supported 

 on a brownish-coloured stipes of about a third of their 

 entire length, the stipes as well as the rachis having, scat- 

 tered throughout their length, numerous small bristle-like 

 scales. In the more vigorous wild plants the habit seems 

 to be erect, but the cultivated plants mostly assume a 

 spreading or even decumbent mode of growth. This species 

 is very closely related to the common Asplenium Adiantum- 

 nigrum, which, in some of its states, very much resembles 

 it; but the outline of the fronds will, we believe, always 



