HARDY EXOTIC FLOWERING PLANTS. 141 
they would produce a very fine effect. With the Ferulas might be 
grouped another handsome umbelliferous plant (Molopospermum cicu- 
tarium) ; and no doubt, when we know the ornamental qualities of the 
order better, we shall find sundry other charming plants of similar 
character. 
Ferns.—No plants may be naturalised more successfully and with 
a 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 
the Canadas will thrive perfectly in any cool, shady, narrow lane, 
or dyke, or ina shady wood. The small ferns that find a home on arid 
alpine cliffs may be established on old walls and ruins. Cheilanthes 
odora, which grows so freely on the sunny sides of walls in Southern 
France, would be well worth trying in similar positions in the south 
of England, the spores to be sown in mossy chinks of the walls. The 
climbing fern Lygodium palmatum, which goes as far north as cold 
Massachusetts, would twine its graceful stems up the undershrubs in 
an English wood too. In fact, there is no fern of the numbers that 
inhabit the northern regions of Europe, Asia, and America, that may 
not be tried with confidence in various positions, preferring for the 
greater number such positions as we know our native kinds to thrive 
best in. One could form a rich and stately type of wood-haunting 
fern vegetation without employing one of our native kinds at all, 
though, of course, generally the best way will be to associate all so 
far as their habits and sizes 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, in the spots over- 
shadowed by the branches of deciduous trees. Then, again, many of 
these Ferns, the more delicate of them, could be used as the most 
graceful of carpets for bold beds or groups of flowering plants. They 
would form part, and a very 
important part, of what we 
have written of as evergreen 
herbaceous plants, and 
might well be associated 
with them in true winter _ 
gardens. 
Geranium, Geranium, 
Erodium.—Handsome and A hardy Geranium. 
