OSMUNDA. 
187 
foot from the soil, quite in the style of the tree-ferns. 
The fronds are narrow in proportion to their length, and 
generally erect ; they are pin- 
nate, and crowded with a clus- 
ter or panicle of sori, they 
attain a height of from 3 to 7 
feet. The pinnse are furnished 
with a double row of leaflets, 
placed opposite to one another, 
elongated, blunt, and plain at 
the margin, except when a 
lobe or ear is formed near the 
base ; the texture of the leaf- 
lets is leathery, the colour 
glaucous. The capsules or 
sori open vertically into two 
valves, are firm in texture, 
green in youth, and chestnut 
in maturity. 
This fern is perhaps the most lordly of our native 
species, and is justly named Royal Fern. Its noble 
fronds rise in luxuriant clusters, more or less erect in 
general, but drooping when they are situated beside 
water, as on the shores of the Lakes of Killarney, where 
Mr. Newman describes them as quite pendulous. The 
flowering-fern ever chooses the most romantic situations 
as its home, now lifting its head from the marshy ground 
where the old Jewish town of Marazion once flourished, 
and now waving its leafy fronds amid the rich woods 
bordering Loch Lomond or Loch Katrine. The fronds 
appear in May, their stems often tinted with rose-colour 
in their early youth; they attain maturity in August, and 
die down in the first severe frost. 
