6 



THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



rise to these marvellous tales is an Asiatic Cibotium, C. Baro- 

 metz. According to the mediaeval herbalists, this wonderful 

 creature had wool, flesh and blood, and a root extending from 

 the navel into the soil. 'The plant was said to resemble a lamb 

 in every respect, but grew on a stalk about a yard high, and 

 turning about and bending to the herbage consumed all within 

 reach, and then pined away with the failure of food until it 

 died." In 1725 an enterprising student actually examined a 

 ''lam.b" and declared it to be only the rhizome of a large fern, 

 covered with piilii and bearing petioles. It had been placed in 

 an inverted position on the museum shelf, the better to simu- 

 late the body and legs of a quadruped. 



The fern trunk is somewhat expanded or spreading at butt 

 and at crown. Its least diameter is about midway between 

 ground and terminal bud. The spongy exterior is often covered 

 with a dense, coarse matting of short, appressed aerial roots, 

 which turn downwards and are more or less closely inter- 

 mingled with the fibrous material of the stem. On old trunks 

 these multitudinous roots, living and dead, form a dark coating, 

 sometimes several inches in thickness. In Honolulu the Japan- 

 ese gardeners and florists make considerable use of the fibrous 

 trunks for the construction of fern-boxes and hanging baskets, 

 and for orchid pots. They have depleted the local woodlands 

 of the older hapu. 



The upper portion of the trunk is disfigured with the old, 

 hard, persistent petioles, that droop at various angles. The 

 dead leaf blade is soon whipped ofY by wind and weather, 

 but the woody stalks long remain. Occasionally one will find a 

 fern trunk more or less completely cased in dead foliage. This 

 condition is most marked with ferns growing under semi- 

 xerophytic conditions. 



The central part of the trunk is made of spongy, starchy 

 parenchyma, traversed by fibrous vascular bundles. In ancient 



