THE FERN BULLETIN 



57 



stone rocks than it is to others. It will grow in any 

 good garden soil, but in such situations it must be 

 protected from its enemies, the ordinary weeds of cul- 

 tivation, which otherwise would soon run it out. The 

 same thing is true of many plants besides ferns. The 

 cactus plant that cheerfully endures the intense in}- 

 solation and frequent drouth of the sand barrens, suc- 

 cumbs very soon to the grass and weeds when planted 

 in rich soil. 



Stipe or Stipes. — When it comes to the designa- 

 tion of the stalk of a fern leaf, there is a wide differ- 

 ence in the way British and Americans regard it. 

 Americans invariably speak of a single stalk as a stipe 

 and they may be somewhat astonished, upon referring 

 to a dictionary, to find that while stipe us given as a 

 legitimate word, it comes direct from the latin Stipes 

 which the Britons, with perhaps a more classical edu- 

 cation, are accustomed to use. In America the plural 

 of stipes is stipes or, rather, the plural of stipe is 

 stipes ; but in England the plural of both stipe and 

 stipes is stipitcs. In certain uncultivated parts of our 

 own country the singular form of the word species is 

 given as specie ; but when we smile at some country- 

 man's description of a specie of fern, our merriment 

 may be somewhat tempered by the thought that we 

 still say stipe instead of stipes. If we could only 

 believe that we use stipe with full knowledge of its 

 derivation, it would not seem so bad, but it is very 

 evidently a case of plain ignorance. 



Apogamy in Pellaea. — Apogamy, or the produc- 

 tion of a new sporophyte from the gametophyte with- 

 out the union of egg and sperm, used to be considered 

 a rather rare phenomenon, but as more study is given 

 the matter, it begins to seem fairly common. Several 

 years ago Woronin reported apogamy in Pellaea 



