BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
THE BROOKLYN INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 
Series III Brooklyn, N. Y., September 22, 1915. Number 8 
EXHIBIT OF FERNS 
A collection of fifty-five named varieties of the Boston fern 
may be viewed at the plant houses of the Garden on October 
8-10, 1915. 
THE BOSTON FERN 
AND SOME OF ITS VARIETIES 
The rubber plant is no more the most favored house plant 
even in Brooklyn. Florists who formerly raised and sold scores 
of thousands of rubber plants in a year now raise them only in 
the hundreds or a few thousands. Instead of the “elastic fig’’ 
the florists now raise the Boston Fern or some of its varieties in 
great numbers, some establishments producing over one hundred 
thousand plants of these ferns each year. 
The Boston fern appeared originally as a variety of the sword 
fern, Nephrolepis exaltata, a species common in all tropical coun- 
tries and growing wild in our own country in Florida. The sword 
fern is essentially like the familiar Boston fern, but is stiffer, 
with narrower leaves, and less easy to grow. In both the sword 
and Boston ferns the leaf consists of the central strand or midrib 
with numerous side leaflets or pinnae. Such a leaf is spoken of 
as “once-divided” or “once-pinnate”. When the pinnae or leaflets 
are themselves divided into smaller leaflets, as in many ferns and 
other plants, the leaf is called “twice-divided” or “twice- 
pinnate”. Leaves may also be three, four, or even more times 
divided. 
The Boston fern received its name because it was first discov- 
ered in a lot of sword ferns being grown by F. C. Becker, a florist 
