

FERN BUDS. 



One of the main differences between ferns and flowering 

 plants lies in the fact that the latter are capable of produc- 

 ing axillary buds where the leaves are attached to the 

 stalks, and that these buds are capable of developing into 

 branches, producing other buds, and in this way forming 

 bushes, or even our largest trees. Ferns, on the other 

 hand, are usually incapable of this method of growth and 

 extension, their fronds springing direct from the rootstock 

 or caudex, and eventually building themselves up by the 

 growth of their tips and those of their minor dimensions, 

 these being formed as unrolling coils, and then growth 

 being complete when once this process of unrolling and 

 subsequent maturation is accomplished. We therefore 

 find no fern built, tree fashion, by successive branches and 

 twigs, produced by successive bud-growths, and even the 

 tree ferns, so-called, are merely robust forms of the shuttle- 

 cock type, elevated into the air by perpendicular extension 

 of the rootstock. 



Buds as Outgrowths. 

 Nature, however, in ferns, as in every other branch of 

 the great biological tree, draws no hard and fast line in this 

 respect, so far, at any rate, as the production of buds is 

 concerned, though she certainly limits the development of 

 these into substantial branches and subsidiary ones, on the 

 lines of trees proper. Hence we find that many ferns are 

 capable of producing buds, and buds of different kinds, as 

 secondary aids to the spores in perpetuating the species. 

 The familiar example of Asplenium bulbifevum, a common 

 market fern, shows us how buds may be produced as out- 

 growths on the upper surface of the frond divisions, and 

 under congenial culture, these develop on the frond into 

 young plants, with several fronds, upon which another 

 generation of buds or bulbils may be produced. Several 



