Pier is. 
27 
PTE R IS. 
)RDING to the authors of the “Synopsis Filicum,” this very large genus 
contains 100 species, and is represented more or less fully in almost every part 
of the world. They are for the most part large ferns, varying a good deal 
in habit and in the divisions of the frond, the rhizome being creeping or 
partly erect. Several representatives of the genus have long been inhabitants 
of our greenhouses, but some of these are natives of Europe, which will be 
considered at length further on. It is remarkable that nearly all the 
variegated ferns in cultivation belong to this genus ; the best known and 
most popular of them is the variety of Pteris crctica which is known in 
gardens as albo-lineata, in which a broad and strongly marked band of white 
runs up the centre of each pinna. A species of wide distribution in both 
hemispheres — P. quadriaurita — produces two very striking varieties, which have been figured 
and described as species : the first, P. argyrcea, like the variety of P. cretica mentioned above, 
has a more or less distinotly marked band of white running down the centre of the frond ; 
this is an East Indian plant : the other, P. tricolor, is one of the most striking of variegated 
plants, whether ferns or otherwise ; the centre of each pinna is of a bright rosy-red, with a 
margin of white, both being set off by the bright shining green of the other portion of the 
frond ; like the last, this is a native of the East Indies. 
One of the most common extra-European garden species is Pteris serndata, a common plant 
in China which has recently been detected in Japan and Natal. It was introduced in 1770 by Mr. 
James Gordon. It is from a foot and a half to two feet high, with ovate pellucid bipinnate 
fronds, the pinnae (especially the terminal ones) being much elongated. This peculiarity is 
remarkably developed in a recently introduced variety known as P. scrrulata Leyi, in which all the 
pinnae are contracted into slender serrate tails. This is the species which has been already alluded 
to in our introduction as affording an example of non-sexual reproduction from the prothallium. 
PTERIS AQUILINA, Linn . THE BRACKEN. 
This is the commonest and most familiar of all Ferns, and attracts but little attention even 
from the lover of these plants, though its large size, remarkable structure, and bright fresh colour 
render it a very notable species. 
The Bracken has a subterranean branching rhizome or caudex creeping for a long distance, 
and giving off irregularly numerous slender dark-coloured root fibres ; it attains a diameter 
of nearly half an inch, is white within but externally brown, being densely covered with a fine 
close, velvety coat of short dark hairs ; there are no scales or paleae. The depth beneath the 
surface of the soil at which the rhizome runs is usually 3 or 4 inches, but it is said sometimes to 
“dip deeply and almost perpendicularly” to a depth of as many as 15 feet, and it grows with 
great rapidity. The fronds come off either rather closely or at longer intervals ; when first 
appearing above ground they are remarkable in having the whole leafy portion bent over and 
pressed closely to the stipes. This latter is about half the length of the frond, and quite erect ; it 
shows a remarkable difference between the portion beneath the ground connected with the caudex 
