148 
BRITISH FERNS. 
dex, in the coronal form, and reaches a height of from 
1 to 3 feet. Its sori are circular and equally distributed 
all over the frond ; they are partially covered by the 
slightly convex involucre, the margin of which is jagged. 
Its frond is triangular in form, the apex tapering very 
elegantly, but the most characteristic feature is the 
curling of the leaflets, the margins being bent forward 
so as to make each leaflet convex, and give the whole 
frond the general expression of curled parsley. The low- 
est pair of pinnse are larger and longer than the rest, 
the under sides of them broader than the upper, as in 
the dilatatum . The whole frond is covered with glands. 
The varieties of this fern are alatum, the fronds of 
which are four times pinnate and very elegant, and pro - 
ductum , with the fronds only tripinnate. 
This fern has all the arching elegance of the former, 
with the extra charm of the curled foliage and tapering 
apex. When growing in its favourite habitat under a 
dripping rock, in the genial woods of Cornwall or of 
Arran, it attains its largest size and form of drooping 
elegance. But when its fronds arise from the clay of 
Sussex and Kent they are firm and rigid, short in sta- 
ture, and devoid of grace ; it is then that they most 
resemble that glory of the culinary artist, crisped pars- 
ley. In this form it occurs plentifully about Barmouth, 
in Wales, adorning old walls on the Harlech road. A 
botanist from thence writes : — “ The lovely recurva 
flourishes here, but in its very dwarfed, bright, crisped, 
and tufted form. It grows in dense clusters, the greater 1 
part of the fronds being barren, and of a peculiar bright 
vivid green. Every smallest part of the frond is dis- 
tinctly concave. The fronds do not exceed a few inches 
in length. 
