HEATH'S FERN PORTFOLIO. 
COMMON POLYPODY— TJVtlgare. 
H OW much beauty there is in very common things is shown at no time perhaps more 
conspicuously than by THE COMMON POLYPODY — Polypodmm vulgar e — when, 
in the late summer and in early autumn, its mellow fruit crowds in serried lines and in rich 
profusion upon the light green undersides of its fronds, as they wave in the breeze from the 
nooks and corners of their favourite habitats. Very different is this simple, but always beautiful, 
fern in the different places in which it chooses to grow. A spore may drop upon a tiny 
seam of earth in rock or wall just moist enough to make it grow, but with conditions not 
sufficiently favourable to encourage development. Then it will remain a minute thing of little 
more than an inch in length. But on a deeper, richer seam of earth it shows proportionate 
growth, it may be of six or eight inches ; and in the moist fork of a tree in forest or bank it 
will reach a length of frond sometimes of two feet and a half. From various parts of the 
upper sides of its scaly, creeping, fleshy rhizoma^ or half subterranean root, it throws up an 
abundance of delightful fronds, evergreen in sheltered places. These are narrowly or broadly 
lance-shaped pinnatifid, that is ‘cleft like a feather,’ or divided into pinnce — or first divisions 
— nearly down to the mid-stems — the clefts being wide enough to give a very distinctly divided 
appearance .to the leafy part. The pinnae are an inch and sometimes more in length, and blunt- 
pointed at their apices. The stipes or stalk is smooth, light-green and herbaceous. The sporeg- 
are contained in sort^ or heaps of spore cases,- which are round in form, and are gathered in 
thick, double rows upon the upper undersides of the pinnae, green whilst }mung, becoming 
yellow or brown when ripened. 
Habitats — Rocks, tree stumps, banks, walls, tree forks, hedges, and in innumerable 
positions where leaf-mould has thickly accumulated. 
Distribution — Algiers, British Islands, California, Canary Islands, Cape, Erzeroum, 
France, Germany, Guatemala, Italy, Kamtschatka, Madeira, Mexico, Sardinia, Scandinavia, Sicily^ 
Spain, Switzerland, and United States. 
