8o 



is about one-third of an inch wide only. The fertile fronds- 

 are merely knobbed all the way up with hard little bosses- 

 containing the spore heaps. In the Lake district Mr. 

 Barnes found an equally narrow form, B. s. linear e 9 but the 

 rounded lobes are flat and smooth edged, and so slightly 

 divided that the barren frond is strap-like, and the fertile 

 ones far narrower still and not knobbed. Two forms mid- 

 way between concinnum and the common are B. s. con- 

 tractum and B. s. strictum, the former with round lobes a 

 third of the way up the frond, and the latter more or less 

 irregularly narrowed the entire length. B. s. imbricatum 

 has the fronds shortened and side divisions so densely set 

 on as to overlap, and B. s. crispissimum Hartley is a little 

 dwarf an inch or two high only, said to have been raised 

 from strictum, though widely different. The Blechnum 

 is occasionally found with the edges saw-toothed, B. s. 

 servatum Airey is a well-marked wild find of this type, and 

 through its spores gave Mr. Airey a much improved plant, 

 termed B. s. plnmosnm Airey, divided nearly thrice, and 

 very handsome. It has also done well 



In the Tasselling Direction. 

 Fern hunting among the Blechnums goes rarely unrewarded 

 as regards plants with some forked fronds, more rarely a 

 plant is found with all fronds divided at their tips, and 

 the writer's second find hard on the heels of B. s. con- 

 cinnum was a fine specimen of this class, B. s. polydactylum 

 Druery, with many- fingered tassels hanging down a hedge 

 slope by the roadside near Wooda Bay, by Lynton. B. s. 

 ramo-cristatum, Kinahan's, and Maunder's forms branch 

 first and tassel afterwards in a very handsome way, and 

 B. s. Maundevi, raised from the latter, is simply a dense 

 ball of cresting. B. s. multifurcatum Barnes, sometimes 

 called trinervio-coronans, has a stiff, radiating crest on a sort 

 of stalk on the frond tip, and is very distinct and pretty. 

 B. s. Aitkinianiim is a curious branching variety, and the 



