115 
popular names or aln TlOSt 
the flowerless ak wisterg occa and orders are se a 
under a single name—it is a seaweed, a sedge,a moss or a fern— 
a 8 
interest arou a and he ae nas acquainted. The 
s imilar a 
which ssible rate the ferns 
genera and species as Tain etaehIy as in re case of the higher 
plants. 
The European cara of the Middle Ages, who wove a rich 
fabric of folk-lore about each familiar object of field and green- 
ed. Thus they reasoned, wit 
ae lore, ay since ferns obviously multiply, they must have 
invisible seeds, which if they could be collected, would bestow 
ae interesting quality of Faia The royal fern ed 
ording to a German folk tale, bore seed on St. John’s Eve 
aad that painstaking herbalist “Hieronymus Boek (14 os 1554) 
t 
graines a that grewe on ac top of the Branches, which yet are not 
et erie " Writing 
of a certain Assia “This ae of Spleenwort is not only 
arren of stalks a eed t also of those spots a 
wherewith the others were spotted:"’. Telling of Dryopteris 
erie fi 
dust or spots, which many rashly have taken for seede: 
