424 



THE BOOK OF CHOICE FERNS. 



A. a. proliferum— pro-lif'-er-um (plant-bearing), Wollaston. 



This is a very elegant variety, and, like the better-known A. angulare 

 proliferum, has finely- divided fronds, which are somewhat sparingly proliferous. 



A. a. pulcherrimum — pul-cher'-rim-um (very beautiful). 



This is described by Druery as a remarkably handsome and extremely 

 rare, uncrested form (Fig. 60), quite barren, and with the pinnules (leafits) 



elongated and curved sickle-fashion, im- 

 parting a peculiar beauty to the frond. 



A. a. pulchrum — puk-chrum (fair), 

 Lowe. 



The fronds of this very handsome 

 variety, which was found wild in North 

 Devonshire, and which under cultivation 

 has proved perfectly constant, are of 

 normal dimensions and furnished with 

 pinna; (leaflets) with somewhat narrow 

 and deeply-cleft pinnules (leafits). Each 

 of the pinnge is slightly yet distinctly 

 forked, and the frond itself terminates in a spreading head of elegantly- 

 laciniated and repeatedly-forked divisions. — Lowe, Our Native Ferns, i., p. 204, 

 fig. 164. 



Several distinct Ferns, from various and distant habitats, commercially 

 considered and accepted amongst amateurs as so many species, are merely 

 forms more or less closely related to A. aculeatum. With the exception, 

 however, of A. angulare, which for reasons already stated (p. 412), and though 

 botanically a form of the common Prickly Shield Fern, is treated separately 

 here, none possess sufficiently distinctive characters to retain the rank of 

 species. The question is of so serious a nature that we consider it 

 necessary to reproduce here in full the following note, which is extracted 

 from the " Synopsis Filicum," and which bears exclusively on this most 

 important subject : 



" A, squarrosum, Don (rufo-barbatum, Wallich), has the rachis densely 

 clothed with reddish-brown, fibrillose scales ; A. proliferum, Brown, is a 



Fig. 60. Pinna and Tip of Frond of Aspidium 

 aculeatum pulcherrimum 

 (much reduced). 



