Fifty Select Greenhouse Ferns. 113 



Polypodium venosum in the way of Niphobolus lingua, 

 a charming object when its ruddy fruits are ripe. This 

 fern requires peculiar treatment, and if properly planted 

 in the first instance will occasion no trouble whatever. 

 In any case the roots must be extra well drained, for 

 stagnant moisture is certain death to this plant. The 

 soil which suits it best is a mixture of equal parts gritty 

 leaf-mould, sandy peat, and potsherds broken to the 

 size of peas. In such a mixture, not more than six 

 inches in depth (four inches is sufficient), on a bottom 

 of some material which will allow of ready escape for 

 surplus moisture, the plant will do well, and prove itself 

 an almost hardy fern. Obviously the best way to deal 

 with a plant so constituted is to suspend it. When 

 grown in a basket in a warm greenhouse it soon forms 

 a fine specimen, the tawny rhizome creeps about wildly, 

 and soon covers the basket with a beautiful complexity 

 of cord-like windings, and from every part of it, except 

 the young pushing shoots of the season, barren and 

 fertile fronds are produced in plenty. To increase it 

 is easy enough; cut off a portion of rhizome with 

 fronds and roots attached ; pot it in the same sort of 

 mixture as is recommended for specimen plants, and give 

 it proper encouragement, and it will soon make a plant. 



Phlebodium aureum, P. sporodocarpum, two bold 

 glaucous tinted ferns, with ruddy rhizomes that run 

 upon the surface. They are both classed as stove ferns 

 in the books, but they are as easy to grow in a green- 

 house as any in this list; at all events we can keep 

 them in luxuriant condition in the cool house. Plenty 

 of grit in the soil, and perfect drainage. 



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