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drooping fronds as much as six or even eight feet in length, the pinnules being deeply 
cut, with serrate lobes, as shown in the accompanying figure. The stipes is much 
enlarged at its base, and, like the typical form, is thickly clotted with light-brown 
scales. It is a very widely distributed plant, being found in most parts of the United 
Kingdom which have been carefully searched for ferns. The variety paleacea is another 
very large and handsome form, which is noticeable for the abundance of shining golden 
scales with which the stipes and rachis are covered. As a contrast to these large varieties, 
two may be referred to which are in the opposite extreme. One of these, the variety 
pumila, is described by Mr. Moore (who is strongly inclined to accord it specific rank) 
as “a permanently small dwarf erect plant, remarkable, among other characteristics, for the 
rounding of the points of its pinnae and of its pinnules, which gives to its upper surface a 
concave appearance.” This does not often exceed from nine inches to a foot in height ; the 
fronds, when fresh, have a pleasant odour. It is not at all a common plant, being almost 
confined to North Wales, and there found only at a considerable altitude. The other dwarf 
form, abbreviata, is rather larger and coarser than pumila; and the pinnules are large, broad, 
obtuse, and concave, while in pumila they are small and convex. The variety cristata, which 
has the fronds and pinn;e divided and curled at the apex, is, according to Mr. Moore, 
“doubtless the most beautiful, all points considered, among the British Ferns”; there are a 
good many forms of this, in which the multifid and crisped peculiarity is developed in a 
greater or lesser degree, to be found in the collections of the curious, but we do not think it 
necessary to refer to them more particularly. 
LASTREA REMOTA, Moore. 
It is a matter of opinion as to how far this plant is entitled to specific rank. The authors of 
the “Synopsis Filicum,” as well as Prof. Babington, consider it a variety of L.spinulosa ; Mr. Moore, 
on the other hand, holds it to be distinct from that species as well as from L. Filix-mas, to which 
it has been allied by some botanists. It certainly much resembles those vigorous examples of 
L. spinulosa which have narrow, nearly upright fronds ; while its tripinnate, not bipinnate, fronds 
separate it from the incised forms of L. Filix-mas. When first described, it was thought to be a 
variety of L. rigida , but its resemblance to this species is by no means striking. It is a plant 
of very limited range, its only places of growth, so far as we are aware, being southern Germany 
and the English Lake district, near Windermere. 
L. remota has a tufted scaly caudex, with erect elongated pinnate fronds, having stalked pinnae 
which are longest in their middle portion. The fronds are without glands, and the spores are borne 
upon the whole of the under-side. These are situated nearer the midvein than the edge of the 
pinnule, to which circumstance the plant owes its specific name. From its extreme rarity this 
fern is but little known, and its position, as has already been remarked, is somewhat uncertain ; 
we have not succeeded in finding any easily recognisable characters by which it may be sepa- 
rated from the allied species. Milde considers it to be a hybrid between L. Filix-mas and L. 
spinulosa , between which species it holds an intermediate position. 
LASTREA RIGIDA, Presl. 
This is another rare fern, confined, in the British Islands, to a few localities in Lancashire, 
Yorkshire, and Westmoreland, at an elevation of from twelve to fifteen thousand feet above the 
