European Ferns. 
INTRODUCTION. 
ON FERNS IN GENERAL. 
is probably no group of plants which has more numerous or 
more enthusiastic admirers than the fern tribe. This, at first sight, 
appears somewhat remarkable, for their flowerless state deprives them 
to a great extent of that wonderful variety of form and hue which 
other plants can boast ; but their ever-fresh green, and the graceful 
outlines of their delicate plume-like fronds, constitute strong claims to 
admiration, and in some measure account for the popularity which 
ferns have attained. Then, some of the commonest species are also 
some of the most beautiful ; moreover, they can be grown with the 
greatest ease even in the back garden of a London house ; they 
require little or no care, and once established, will go on, year by 
year, unfolding their graceful crosier-like fronds, and in this very 
point betraying their position in the vegetable kingdom. For this 
rolling up of the young fronds in watch-spring fashion, which in 
scientific language is termed circinate vernation, is characteristic of 
the fern tribe ; although there are exceptions to the rule — as in the 
Adder's-tongue and Moonwort, in which the vernation is straight ; 
while on the other hand, in some flowering plants, such as the 
Sundews, it is circinate. 
We have said that ferns do not produce flowers ; we might almost go farther, and say that 
they are equally destitute of leaves ! Without putting the case so strongly, however, we shall 
readily perceive that the fronds of ferns differ essentially from true leaves, inasmuch as upon 
their under-side, or less frequently upon their margin, they bear the fructification, which a true 
leaf among flowering plants never does. This may at first sight seem surprising, as Cactuses 
and other plants, notably a pretty species of Phyllanthus often seen in hot-houses, and the 
familiar Butcher’s Broom ( Ruscus aculcatus), appear to bear flowers upon their leaves ; but these 
seeming leaves are really stems or branches. The leafy portion of a fern is certainly not, 
however, a stem, but a modified leaf, and is usually known by the term frond. If we bear 
in mind that these fronds are circinate in vernation, and bear upon their backs or edges the 
cases containing the spores — which spores are, in some respects, analogous to the seed in flowering 
plants — we shall have gone some way towards seeing how Ferns differ from Phanerogams, as 
flowering plants are called in scientific parlance. 
The absence of flowers determines the position of ferns, then, to be in the great lower division 
of the vegetable kingdom — the Cryptogamia, or Flowerless Plants. What are called “ flowering” 
HERE 
