SKETCHES FROM FERN- LIFE. 



65: 



ing also white, at a little distance one plant appears to 

 bear blossoms of several different colors at one time. 

 Occasionally we find a centrosema with pure white flow- 

 ers, or with petals broadly margined and feathered with 

 white. 



A most attractive feature of this plant is the way in 

 which the flowers look you in the face. Every imagin- 

 ative person sees faces in the pansy, and the centrosema 

 is even more suggestive. Therefore, "Look at Me" 

 would not be a bad name for it. The blossoms are pro- 

 duced in great abundance, sometimes from six to eight 

 in a cluster. 



The foliage of the centrosema is graceful and delight- 

 fully fragrant. The stems are slender, curving and 

 twining over any support with the utmost grace. They 

 are not much larger than good-sized knitting-needles, but 

 they often climb to the height of six or eight feet. 



I predict for this plant large sales and great popularity, 

 and anticipate for it, when once the florists take it in 

 hand, as great a variety and delicacy of coloring as we 

 find in the sweet-pea. It is well adapted for many gar- 

 dening purposes, blooms until frost, and if potted will no 

 doubt flower freely in the house. 



New Jersey. Wm. F. Bassett. 



SKETCHES FROM FERN-LIFE 



AT HOME AND 



ATURE'S favorite 

 lace-pattern is the 

 fern, and like an 

 extravagant beauty, 

 she often decks her- 

 self richly with it. 

 These laces are not 

 always fine and cob- 

 webby. In the jun- 

 gles of Australia and 

 the islands of the 

 southern seas, where 

 the strangest forms 

 of tropical vegeta- 

 tion are produced, and explorers find gigantic types of 

 orders which in a temperate climate are represented by 

 modest herbs, there are whole forests of ferns that tower 

 aloft with tree-like trunks and spread their clustered 

 fronds on high in rivalry of the palms. Yet these majes- 

 tic plants are generated exactly as other ferns — from 

 germs of a single cell — and make their growth in the 

 same manner, by developing new fronds at the summit 

 of the stock. These young fronds are rolled in the bud 

 like the young, vernal growth of our own familiar spe- 

 cies. Moreover, the pillared trunk of these palm-like 

 tree-ferns represents an upright form of the prostrate 

 stock, more or less extended, which 

 forms the hard and woody base of 

 many ferns — in fact, of most. It an- 

 swers obviously enough to the strong, 

 thick stump of Clayton's flowering fern , 

 or the stout, ascending stock of most 

 aspidiums, and equally, though the 

 analogy seems remote, to the scaly 

 rootstock of the polypodium, the slen- 

 der creeping stems of the marsh-fern, 

 and some others. 



The trunk of Dicksonia arbores- 

 cctis, the most beautiful of tree-ferns, 

 covered with rows of uniform projec- 

 tions curving outward — bases of stalks from which the 

 fronds have fallen away — resembles in effect a sculptured 



Fig. I.— Fruiting 

 Lobe of Dicksonia. 



column, and supports a canopy of broad, green fronds of 

 the loveliest form imaginable. We need not depend en- 

 tirely on imagination, however, to give us a conception 

 of their beauty ; we have a perfect representative of the 

 genus in our common "hay-scented fern," Dicksonia 

 pilosiuscula (D. functilobula of Kunze), illustrated by 

 figs. I, 2 and 3. 



This fern abounds in moist woods and low, shaded 

 places. When full grown, it is generally two or three 

 feet in height. Its broad fronds taper to a point, are 

 twice divided (the segments of 

 the pinnae being deeply cut in 

 lobes), and these again incised. 

 As the texture of the frond is 

 delicate and its color a soft, 

 light green, fading to ivory- 

 white, the lace-like effect pro- 

 duced by such minute division 

 and subdivision is exquisite. 

 Imagine a circle of such fronds 

 eight or ten times enlarged, 

 arranged in umbrella-fashion 

 at the top of a carved and 

 fluted column as large as the 

 bole of a palm tree, and you 

 have a fairly accurate idea of 

 tree-ferns of the genus dick- 

 sonia, which may, perhaps, be 

 regarded as the culmination 

 of beauty in the vegetable 

 kingdom. 



Any one possessing a mag- 

 nifying-glass of considerable 

 power may find interest and 

 pleasure in studying the pecu- 

 liar leaf structure of the ferns, and the various modes in 

 which their fructification is accomplished. The veining 

 of the fronds will be a point especially noted in making 

 such minute examinations, the clusters of spore-cases of 

 whatever shape, and the membrane (called the indusium) 

 by which they are often covered in their early stage, 

 being attached to the tip or other portion of the smaller 



Fig. 2.— Middle Pinna of 

 Dicksonia pilosiuscula 



