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the pinnae, but more or less combined above ; they are smooth, deep green, and toothed or 
serrated, the texture varying a good deal in different examples, but usually rather thin and 
soft ; the sori are small and numerous, roundish in shape, confined, for the most part, to the 
upper portion of the frond, forming two regular lines, and having the kidney-shaped indusium 
which is characteristic of Lastrea. 
The Male Fern is a plant of very wide distribution, both 
in the old and new worlds. It extends throughout Europe, and 
over a large part of Asia ; it is found in North and South 
Africa, and in Abyssinia, as well as in the Cape Verde Islands, 
the Azores, the Canaries, and other African islands ; it is found 
in North (California, Florida, Newfoundland), Central (Mexico, 
Guatemala), and South America (Peru, Brazil, Ecuador), but not 
in the United States. Its habitat, too, is varied ; it grows either 
in wood or plain, on common or hedge-bank, or in moist and 
sheltered spots. 
In former times a good deal of belief was manifested in the 
mysterious properties of the Male Fern, many of which were 
similar to those of the Bracken, already described. The following 
notice by John Parkinson sums up the ideas then current on the 
subject : — 
“ Of the ashes of Feme is made a kind of thicke or darke 
coloured greene glasse in sundry places in France, as in the 
Dutchey of Maine, &c. (and in England also as I have beene told 
by some) out of which they drinke their wine. The seede which 
this and the female Feme doe beare, and to be gathered onely 
on Midsommcr eve at night, with I know not what conjuring 
words is superstitiously held by divers, not onely Mountebankes 
and Quacksalvers, but by other learned men (yet it cannot be 
said but by those that are too superstitiously addicted) to be of 
some secret hidden vertue, but I cannot finde it exprest what it 
should be : for Bauhinus in his Synonimies upon Matthiolus saith, 
those talcs are neither fabulous nor superstitious, which he there 
saith he will shew in his History : but Matthiolus, Lugdunensis 
and others declaime against such opinion : experience also sheweth 
that they beare seede, although Theophrastus, Galen, Dioscorides 
and Pliny following him, say they neither beare flowers nor 
seede : for if about Midsommcr (for then usually it is ripe) you 
gather the stalkes of Feme and hang them on a thread with 
male fern (reduced). some faire white paper or cloth under them, you shall finde a 
small dust to fall from them which is the seede, and from them 
doe spring plants of the same kindes, and such young plants risen from the fallen seede have 
beene scene growing about the old plants, for as I said before no herb growing on the earth 
or in the water (except some with double flowers which are cncreased by the roote) but doe 
beare seede, &c. Dioscorides rclatcth a great contrarictie in nature betweene the Feme and the 
Reede, that each one will perish where the other is planted, as if it were by a natural instinct, 
which thing I thinke happeneth rather from the soiles, a Reede not joying in a dry ground 
