CHAPTER XII. 
THE ROYAL FERN 
{Osmunda regalis). 
WELL-l^^AMED Fern is this, as everyone will allow 
who has seen it at its best, clothing the banks 
of our Devonshire streams with a dense shrub- 
like growth, in which a tall man might stand 
unseen, the fronds attaining sometimes a length 
of 12ft. Plenty of moisture is imperatively 
necessary for the well-being of this Fern, which, 
under natural conditions, has its roots constantly 
wet or exposed to a moist atmosphere. The 
moist atmosphere is rendered requisite by the fact that a large 
portion of the root is formed on the surface of the ground 
in the shape of huge, rounded masses, sometimes several feet 
over, covered with absorbent root-points — aerial roots, in fact — 
from among which here, there, and yonder spring the crowns 
of towering fronds. These fronds, though of tough, leathery 
texture, are perfectly deciduous, renewing their growth in the 
spring with great rapidity. 
Apart from its huge size, the Royal Fern is easily dis- 
tinguished by the terminal pinnae and tip of frond being 
contracted and transformed into long, narrow masses of 
brownish spore-capsules, distantly resembling a flower of 
the Spiraea type, whence it is sometimes, though of course 
I 
