198 
HISTORY OF BRITISH FERNS. 
the two in some parts of Scotland and in Ireland. It is 
widely distributed in other parts of the world. 
Genus XVII. OSMUNDA, Linnceus. 
The Osmunda is called the Royal Fern, and well it 
deserves the regal honours, for it is the most majestic of 
our indigenous Ferns. It is known by its large size, by 
having its fronds entirely leafy in the lower part, and 
entirely fertile at the top, the pinnae or branches at the 
apex of the fronds being changed from the ordinary leafy 
form into dense masses of spore-cases, arranged in the 
aggregate in the same way as the leafy pinnules would 
have been. This mode of bearing the fructification renders 
it so strikingly obvious at first sight, and gives the plant 
an aspect so entirely different from that of those in which 
the fructification is “more or less concealed by its position 
on the under-surface, that the Osmunda^ though one of 
what are classified as flowerless plants, is often anomalously 
called the Flowering Fern. In truth, the contracted 
chocolate-coloured apex looks not unlike a dense panicle of 
