12 ASPLENIUM GERMANICUM. 



British Ferns. It is a diminutive species, approaching nearest 

 to the A, ruta-muraria, and even considered by some authors 

 as merely a variety of this common British Fern. There are 

 characters, however, which appear to render it a distinct spe- 

 cies. As a cultivated plant, it does not seem by any means 

 difficult to grow; whereas A. ruta-muraria, common as it is, 

 requires more than ordinary skill to enable the cultivator to 

 produce a good specimen. Probably this, in a great measure, 

 may be attributed to the unnatural manner in which it is 

 grown under pot culture; the fronds are made to stand upright, 

 whilst in its wild state they are horizontal. This difficulty 

 might easily be overcome by adopting wooden baskets, (some- 

 what similar to those in general use for orchidaceous plants,) 

 in lieu of the ordinary flower-pot. In these baskets, those 

 species requiring abundance of stone and old mortar might be 

 so arranged with these materials, with the addition of a small 

 amount of soil and washed sand, that nature could be very 

 closely imitated; the roots being placed, as it were, in the 

 crevices of a rock, and with the fronds protruding through 

 the sides of the wooden basket. In order that these baskets 

 can be understood, a sketch of one is added as a vignette 

 to this species. 



It is a hardy species. 



The fronds are pinnate, the lower pinna being ternate; 

 pinnae alternate and distant, bifid or trifid at the apex, the 

 pinnae being destitute of a mid-vein, glabrous, linear, and very 

 narrow; terminal, being attached to a tufted rhizoma. 



The length of the frond is from two to three inches: fronds 

 have been gathered on the continent even double this size. 

 The colour of the stipes is dark at the base and green above; 

 the pinnae are pale green. 



The edge of the indusium is smooth and even. 



This species is very subject to variation, scarcely two fronds 

 being alike. It is nowhere common. In Fifeshire it has been 

 found about three miles from Dumfermline; on rocks on the 

 Biver Tweed, near Kelso, Roxburghshire; also in Perthshire, on 

 the Stenton Rocks, near Dunkeld; on the Kylce Crags, Nor- 

 thumberland; in Borrowdale, Cumberland; and in Caernarvon- 

 shire, North Wales. Mr. Sowerby mentions in his work on the 

 "Ferns of Great Britain," that Mr. W. Hawker had found two 



