2l6 
THE FERN WORLD 
Fern. From the crown of the rootstock is thrown up a 
cluster of fronds of a dull yellowish green, with a stipes — 
about the same length as the leafy portion — -of a sort of hay 
colour. The form of the fronds is broadly lance-shaped, 
and they are of two kinds, barren and fertile, twice pinnate, 
having rachides the same colour as the stipides, and channelled 
along their upper sides. The pinnae in the barren fronds are 
arranged in pairs along the rachis, almost opposite each 
other. They are longest at the base, decreasing in length 
as they approach the apex of the frond, where they become 
merged into simple pinnules. Along on each side of the 
pinnae are tows of pinnules attached to the mid-stems of the 
pinnae — the secondary rachides — by very short stalks, which 
are in reality a continuation of the mid-stems, and placed 
each somewhat distant from the other. Sometimes the 
pinnules are placed along the pinnae in opposite pairs, and 
sometimes in alternation on the opposite sides, largest and 
longest near the main rachis of the frond, and getting 
gradually smaller towards the points of the pinnae, where 
the pinnules merge into a single, pointed lobe. The pinnules 
are oblong, blunt-pointed, from about an inch to three inches 
long, according to the size of the plant, and from about a 
third of an inch to half an inch or more broad. The venation 
consists of a raid-vein, from which — on each side — branch to 
the margin of the pinnule a series of venules once or twice 
forked, and running nearly parallel with each other. The 
fertile frond differs from the barren one in having the 
pinnules of the highest of its upper pairs of pinnae con- 
tracted, and bearing upon their margins, attached to the 
system of veins, spore cases which are somewhat globular in 
form, stalked, and two-valved. These spore cases cluster so 
thickly on the contracted leaflets or pinnules as to give to 
them, when brown and ripe, somewhat the appearance of a 
flower spike. Hence the name of ‘Flowering Fern,’ which 
