28 FERN GROWING 



and these are termed 'bulbils,' yet these young plants are 

 not invariably like the parent. In 1865 bulbils from Scolo- 

 pendrium Wardii produced strong-growing conglomerate forms, 

 and bulbils on the crested Osmunda regalis yielded a dwarf 

 grandiceps, with a more spreading root ; this plant is now 

 twenty-five years old. Bulbils from Scolopendrium Kelwayi 

 have produced a more diminutive form ; and others from 

 Colonel Jones's polydactylous divisilobum of Aspidium angulare, 

 plants that are not polydactylous.* Ferns that are not usually 

 bulbiferous occasionally put on this character. Miss Bellairs 

 sent me the Axminster plumose Lady Fern, having the fronds 

 crowded with young plants. 



" There is yet another means of propagation which has 

 been discovered by Mr. Druery in the sterile Lady Fern 

 known as Clarissima. This is in reality the formation of 

 prothalli on the frond without the medium of the spore ; 

 when these touch the ground they strike root and produce 

 fronds. More than twenty years ago Mr. Clapham showed 

 me an Adiantum Capillus- Veneris, having fronds touching the 

 ground, producing a crop of young plants, and this might 

 have been a case of apospory. Plants, however, raised by 

 this means are also liable to sport. Colonel Jones had 

 several more or less revolved, one furcate, and another not 

 unlike Elworthy's subplumosum. 



" As soon as the discovery of the reproductive organs was 

 known, it occurred to me that the character of the frond 

 must depend upon whether impregnation took place from 

 the same prothallus or from one of a different Fern. This 

 determined me, in making my first experiments, to mix the 

 spores of two varieties of the Hart's-tongue, and as another 

 experiment, two varieties of the Lady Fern. In one of these 



* The beautiful plumose varieties of Aspidium angulare, Baldwini, and iiribri- 

 catum, which received certificates at the Conference, were from] bulbils produced 

 on the var. densum of divisilobum-plumosum. 



