Asplenium. 
1 1 1 
being more and more diversly cut in the edges, and thicker, smooth on the upper part, and 
spotted finely on the under.” Such is the description which “John Parkinson, Apothecary 
of London, and the King’s Herbarist,” gives, in his ponderous folio published in 1640, of the 
fern we have now to take into consideration ; and, if we except the remark on the fineness 
of the “ stalkes,” we shall find his description accurate enough. Ruta-muraria was the old 
name of the species, bestowed upon it by Rembert Dodoens in 1554, and retained as 
a specific title by the great Swedish botanist when he brought order into the chaos of 
scientific nomenclature, and placed our Wall 
Rue in the genus Asplenium. The name is 
an apt one, whether we consider it in its 
reference to the habitat of the plant or the 
appearance of its fronds: although not confined 
to walls, it is essentially a wall plant— more 
characteristically so than any other of our 
ferns ; and the resemblance of the fronds to 
the leaves of Rue, although not always equally 
striking, is often conspicuous enough. The old 
author we have already quoted tells us that 
there were “foure or five speciall sorts of 
hearbes called by the name of Rue, having 
little likenesse thereunto, but only some shew 
in the leaves,” and includes among them the 
little Asplenium of which we have now to 
speak. Certainly the two plants have not very 
much in common — one being a flowering shrub, 
the other a flowerless plant ; but any one 
acquainted with the old herbalists will re- 
member how very miscellaneous an assortment 
of plants is often classed under the same 
heading. The common Garden Rue having 
been, even in Saxon times, very extensively 
used as a remedy in all kinds of disorders — 
Langham, in his “Garden of Health,” gives 
two hundred and sixty-five cases in which it 
is beneficial ! — it was natural that the plant 
which shared its name should be partaker in its medicinal reputation ; and this we find was 
the case. 
To the employment of the Wall Rue in the disease called “the rickets” it owes one 
of its old names — that of Tentwort, which we find employed by Merrett in his “Pinax,” 
and which was for a long time a puzzle to botanical philologists ; Dr. Prior, in the first 
edition of his “Popular Names of British Plants,” calls it “an unintelligible name,” though he 
has since been able to explain it by a reference to Threlkeld’s curious little “ Synopsis 
Stirpium Plibernicarum ” (1 727) — a work which, the author tells us, was “the first essay of 
this kind in the kingdom of Ireland.” The passage explaining the name is sufficiently 
quaint to be worth extracting. “ It is one of the capillary plants, and a specifick against the 
Rickets. Por this reason our ancestors gave it the name of Tentwort, deeming it a sovereign 
ASPLENIUM RUTA-MURARIA. 
[From Gerard's “ Herbal . ”) 
