CHAPTER VI 
THE FERNS OF SOUTH AFRICA 
The number of species of ferns in South Africa is re- 
markably small compared with the whole flora, and in the 
south-west portion this is especially the case, and it is probably 
on this account that while, seventy years ago, Cape heaths, 
geraniums and bulbs were the leading favourites in English 
conservatories, Cape ferns were almost unknown. 
They had indeed, like other plants, been collected by the 
earlier travellers, among whom were Burrmann, de Chamisso, 
Sparrman, P. J. Bergius, Krebs, and Lichtenstein, and a few 
species had been described by Bergius, Linnaeus, and Will- 
denow, before the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it 
remained for Thunberg to describe the South African ferns 
as a group, for the first time, in his Prodromus Plantarum 
Capensium (1800). 
It is interesting to compare the species then known, and 
the names in use in those days, with present ideas on the 
same subject, and for this purpose his list of ferns is given, 
and opposite to each species the present name for the same 
plant. 
Thunberg’s Name 
Present Name 
Onoclea capensis ... 
Blechnum capense. 
Ophioglossum lusitanicum 
Ophioglossum capense. 
Osmunda barbara 
Todea barbara. 
Acrostichum cordatum 
Ceterach cordatum. 
Pteris cuspidata 
Marattia (young). 
Pteris tabularis 
Blechnum tabulare. 
Pteris cretica 
Pteris cretica. 
