ASPLENIUM. 



567 



of dimensions, as well as in other respects, of the two varieties when mature, 

 their habits are altogether dissimilar, that of Vernonice being erect, whilst that 

 of conioides is lax and spreading. — Lowe, Our Native Ferns, ii., p. 93, 

 fig. 416. 



A. F.-f. Yictoriee— Vic-to'-ri-a? (Victoria's), Moore. 



This is not only the most extraordinary and the most curious, but also 

 the most beautiful, of all the known forms of A. Fili.r.-foemina, for Moore, who 

 named it and considered it worthy of that high distinction, made a remark 

 which, was very significative of the high opinion in which he held the plant. 

 Dried fronds of it having been forwarded to him by Mr. J. Sadler, of 

 Edinburgh (who himself had received them from various sources, all originating 

 from the same plant), Mr. Moore, in answer, wrote him as follows: "The 

 variety of Filix-foemina is quite new, so far as I know, and is a very beautiful 

 one. As a queen amongst Lady Ferns it would well bear to be called 

 Victoria" Accordingly, it was published under that name in a list issued 

 in March, 1865 (four years after its discovery), by Mr. P. Neill Fraser, of 

 Cannonmills Lodge, Edinburgh, and later on in various catalogues, notably 

 those of Messrs. A. Stansfield and Son, of Todmorden, Lancashire, and of 

 Mr. li. Sim, of Foot's Cray, Kent. It was described in May, 1864, by the 

 Editor of the West of Scotland Horticultural Magazine; but even the best of 

 descriptions gives but a faint idea of the beauty of this plant, which was 

 found accidentally— a large- sized and full-grown specimen — in 1861 by the 

 side of a byway which runs along the margin of a wood on the Buchanan 

 Estate, Stirlingshire, the property of the Duke of Montrose. Its lovely fronds, 

 lanceolate (spear-shaped) in outline, about ljft, long and 5in. broad in then- 

 widest part, are furnished with pinnae (leaflets) averaging 2^in. in length. 

 The leaflets are most peculiarly formed, as their rachis (stalk of the leafy 

 portion) divides close to the junction with the main stalk into twin leaflets, 

 one of which ascends and the other descends at an angle of about oOdeg. ; 

 each ascending leaflet therefore crosses the next two descending ones and 

 vice versa, thus forming a number of diamond -shaped spaces (Fig. 100); These 

 leaflets are very narrow, and about lin. below their extremity divide into 

 three or four very narrow branches, which, like the summit of the frond 

 itself, are several times forked and crested ; they are subdivided into small 



