146 



THE FLOWER GROWER'S GUIDE. 



Eaising and Propagating Ferns. 



By far the greater portion of ferns grown in this country are raised from spores, but 

 where these cannot be obtained recourse is had either to dividing the plants, or separating 

 the rhizomes as these are formed, while some species of aspleniums, and other kinds, 

 form plantlets along the upper portion, or at the ends of the fronds. (See page 150.) 



Spores. — Eeferring to these, it may be said that there are many persons, and among 

 them not a few who either cultivate ferns or employ them for decorative purposes, 

 who regard the more less prominent scar-like specks, or lines, on the under-sides 

 of the fronds, as the " flowers " of ferns. They are not flowers, but more analogous to 

 seed capsules, though ferns do not produce seeds of the same nature as those of flowering 

 plants. 



The small familiar objects referred to are sori, or sporangia, cases containing spores, 

 and these have been appropriately described as the "representatives of seeds." All fronds 

 do not produce them, and those which do not are called sterile, while those on which 

 they are clustered are known as fertile. In a few instances, as in the Eoyal Fern 

 (Osmunda regalis), for example, the spore cases are clustered in the form of brown 

 spikelets, which are cylindrical, fertile fronds, changed from the green, flattened, sterile 

 fronds ; and, therefore, such kinds are not uncommonly called flowering ferns." 



Fructification. — It is true that ferns produce organs analogous to flowers, and with 

 corresponding sexual distinctions; but these organs are never formed on the developed 

 fronds, and are only discoverable by the microscope on the underside of the first visible 

 growth of the fern from the spore, which spreads on the surface of the soil like a liver- 

 wort (marchantia). There lurk the essential organs of ferns — one kind, as if embossed 

 on the flattened growth for yielding the equivalent of pollen, the other depressed for 

 receiving it. By this process alone can spores be formed, which, when treated as minute 

 seeds, give rise to sporelings, or young ferns, as they are produced in millions for sale. 



It is to be noted that spores do not form on the flattened growth (prothallium) 

 which bears the organs of fructification, but only on the fronds that follow, on which 

 they develop, it may be two or three years after fertilisation has been effected. That is 

 a very interesting, not to say a mysterious, fact, as the connection between cause and 

 effect does not seem to be easily traceable. Another fact is also worthy of mention — 

 namely, that when a fern plant has once been made fertile in the manner indicated, it 

 may, under favourable conditions, continue to yield spores throughout its career, as may 



