Hardy Exotic Flowering Plants 171 



Giant Fennel, Ferula. — Noble herbaceous plants of the 

 parsley family, with exquisitely cut leaves ; forming magni- 

 ficent tufts of verdure, like the most finely-cut ferns. The 

 leaves rise very early in spring, and go at the end of 

 summer, and the best way to plant them is in places occupied 

 by spring flowers, among which they give a fine effect. 

 With the Giant Fennels might be grouped various other 

 plants of this distinct family of plants, so far very little seen 

 in gardens. 



Ferns. — No plants may be naturalized with more charming 

 effect than ferns. The royal ferns, of which the bold foliage 

 is reflected in the marsh waters of Northern America, will 

 do well in the many places where our own royal fern thrives. 

 The graceful maidenhair fern of the rich woods of the 

 Eastern States and Canada thrives in any cool place, or dyke, 

 or in a shady wood, but the soil must be leafy and good. 

 The small ferns that find a home on arid alpine cliffs may 

 be established on old walls and ruins. Cheilanthes odora, 

 which grows on the sunny sides of walls in Southern France, 

 should be in the south of England, the spores to be sown in 

 mossy chinks of the walls. The climbing fern Lygodium 

 palmatum, which I saw with great pleasure running through 

 native shrubs in cold New Jersey, and which goes as far 

 north as cold Massachusetts, will climb up the undershrubs 

 in England. There is no fern of the nunibers that inhabit 

 the northern regions of Europe, Asia, and America, that may 

 not be tried with confidence. One could form a rich and 

 stately type of fern vegetation without employing one of our 

 native kinds at all, though the best way will be to associate 

 all so far as their habits will permit. Treat them boldly ; 

 put strong kinds out in glades ; imagine colonies of Daffodils 

 among the Oak and Beech Ferns, fringed by early Aconite, 



