EUROPEAN FERNS. 
ONOCLEA. 
HIS is a small though handsome genus, containing only three species, natives 
of cold or temperate regions. O. sensibilis, the type of the genus, is a 
common North American fern, which is found also in Northern Asia, 
Mandschuria, and Japan ; it is frequently met with in cultivation, having 
been known in this country as long ago as 1699, when it was grown by 
Bobart in the Oxford Botanic Garden. It has been erroneously recorded as 
a British plant, being said to grow in North Yorkshire and near Warrington, 
Cheshire (see “ Phytologist,” i. 492). The note announcing its discovery 
stated that in the latter locality it grew plentifully and very luxuriantly in 
an old stone quarry, having been first found there about 1839. There is a 
Warrington specimen in the British Herbarium of the Botanical Department of the British 
Museum, communicated by the late Mr. Borrer, but it is there described — no doubt with 
greater accuracy — as “ naturalised in boggy ground, near the site of a former garden.” This 
attempt to raise the number of our indigenous species has been paralleled, as our readers 
will remember, by the pseudo-discovery of the Elk’s-horn Fern ( Platy cerium alcicorne ) upon 
Cader Idris. O. sensibilis, the “Sensitive Fern” of American authors, is a handsome plant, 
the leafy, pinnate, barren fronds being much taller than the fertile ones, the latter being 
twice pinnate. The barren fronds vary from four inches to three feet in height, and are so 
thin and delicate in texture that it is said that they will wither even while growing if drawn 
once or twice through the hand ; hence the specific name sensibilis. With this plant are 
now associated two other species, better known under the name of Struthiopteris, and differing 
chiefly from it in the simply pinnate fertile fronds, and in having the veins of the barren 
fronds all free. One of these, O. orientalis, is a native of Sikkim, Assam, and Japan; the 
second, 0 . gernianica , we shall now proceed to consider somewhat at length. 
ONOCFEA STRUTHIOPTERIS, Hoffm. 
This is the largest and handsomest of the ferns of Europe, and, indeed, has some pretensions 
to be considered a tree-fern. This results from the caudex forming an upright thick trunk, 
which, however, never attains to any height, reaching at most to three-quarters of a foot : still, 
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