28 . 
THE HAY-SCENTED BUCKLER FERN. 
Lastrea recurvci. 
Plate 4, Fig. 2, Page 207. 
To its extreme elegance of form this beautiful Fern, which is 
one of the smallest of our native Buckler Ferns, adds a pecu- 
liar attractiveness. Its fronds possess the exquisite scent of 
new-mown hay — an attraction which is shared by no other 
British species. On this account it fairly deserves the specific 
name of semula, ‘to rival,’ given to it by most modern 
botanists. The name sometimes given to it of foenisecii, from 
the Latin foenum, hay, is also indicative of its aromatic 
peculiarity. The name recurva, however, is here retained as 
being more generally descriptive of the habit and appearance 
of this Fern. Its peculiar hay scent, though always to be 
detected in dried fronds of this species, is not always so 
immediately noticeable in growing fronds, whilst the peculiar 
recurved appearance, or curving forward of the lobes of the 
pinnules — a peculiarity which is confined to this species — is 
at once recognized. Hence the word recurvci. It is an ever- 
green species, and grows in the sheltered hollows of woods, 
and on the moist and sloping banks of deeply-shaded hedge- 
rows, loving especially positions where it can feed upon soft 
deposits of leaf-mould. 
Description. — There is up to a certain point a remarkable 
resemblance between small fronds of Lavtrea dilafata and 
fronds of the present species. So much so, indeed, that small 
