THE COMMON BRACKEN 81 



bracken leaf is technically described as " thrice pinnate/' The 

 uppermost part of the leaf is less cut up than the lower parts ; 

 note the different degrees of position or lobing at the base, middle, 

 and top, sketching a part of each region. We shall return to the 

 leaf presently. 



Try to pull up a whole leaf ; it is firmly fixed below, and 

 the black basal part of the stalk that comes up has been wrenched 

 off from what ? Dig up a whole plant ; it will be necessary 

 to use a trowel or a strong knife. The creeping stem, which 

 grows in the soil, gives off thin wiry roots, besides sending up 

 the leaves. It is dark brown or almost black, except at the 

 rounded knob-like growing tips, and shows along each flank 

 a lighter coloured line. You will notice also the withered bases 

 of leaves of former years, which have died down ; the rudi- 

 ments of leaves which will grow up later these, like the growing 

 tips, are rounded and densely clad with brown chaffy hairs ; 

 and buds, resembling the young leaves, and arising from the 

 leaf -stalks just above their bases not from the stem itself, 

 as in most plants. The stem does not branch much, and the 

 leaves are well spaced out on it ; each branch produces, as a 

 rule, only one leaf each year. The leaves are in two rows on 

 the flanks of the stem, each leaf bending up at the base so as to 

 become vertical. If you cut across the stem at different places, 

 and also slit it longitudinally (starting from the tip), you will 

 see that, except at the soft growing ends, it is traversed by con- 

 spicuous dark-brown bands and cords and also by lighter- 

 coloured cords, both lying in a whitish ground-mass. By examin- 

 ing slices with a lens and by scraping away the soft tissue you 

 will see that the dark strands are hard and fibrous, while the 

 lighter ones contain open tubes ; also that there is an outer dark- 

 brown hard layer, except at the light lines visible on the surface. 

 These light lines, where the soft inner tissue is exposed at the 

 surface, probably serve for aeration, having the same function 

 as the lenticels on the stems of trees. Does the leaf-stalk contain 

 both kinds of strands, or only the light-coloured tube-containing 

 ones ? You can trace the tube-containing strands right up 

 the leaf-stalk and into the thin leaflets, where they branch and 

 finally fork like a letter Y. Cut off a leaf, and set the end in 



VOL. IV. 6 



