34 
OSMUNDA REGALIS. 
[ Which means Osmund Royal, or Regal. ] 
THE FLOWERING FERN AND ROYAL MOONWORT. 
Root a stump, or tuber, from the top of which arise 
the fronds, which grow from two to ten feet high, 
green, twice pinnate. Rachis erect, smooth. Pinnae 
distant, nearly opposite. Pinnules oblong, slightly 
crenate, or notched, and somewhat auricled. The 
leaves at the top of the frond produce their fructifi- 
cation from their substance, or become changed into 
seed ; a fact so remarkable, so unusual, and so 
striking, as calculated to arrest the attention of the 
most careless observer. Pray consider the examples 
in the plate, which were impressed and printed from 
a plant gathered near Sidmouth. The left-hand ex- 
ample shows a branch which presents the common 
leafy appearance, but the right-hand one exhibits a 
state partly leaf and partly fruit. Even the pinnules 
are divided between fruit and leaf. The lowest one 
reveals a few seeds at the lower edge of the leaf; 
and the edge looks as if it had been eaten away 
where the seeds are. The two immediately above 
are half seed and half leaf, as if a sort of process of 
conversion or transformation had been at work. All 
the stalks which might have been the mid-veins of 
pinnules or small leaves, are stalks bearing bunches 
of spore coses. This is very remarkable and highly 
interesting, and would strike any one with wonder, 
if Nature were not full of wonders wherever we ex- 
amine her works. And observe, that the spore cases 
sketched on an enlarged scale at the top left-hand 
corner, are without the elastic ring, which is common 
to all the ferns we have previously been considering. 
In the plate representing the Polypodium, vulgare 
there is a sketch of a spore case with the jointed, 
elastic ring about it, by the elasticity of which ring 
the cover is lifted off. In the Osmunda regalis the 
spherical spore case is supported on a stalk, and it 
splits open into two halves working on a hinge. As 
to the derivation of the word Osmunda authors are 
not quite agreed. Some take it from the Saxon word 
mund, strength, and others from one Osmund, a 
