THIS NUMBER COMPLETES SERIES X, 1922. 
BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
Series X Brooklyn, N. Y., October 18, 1922. Nos. 9 and 10 
FERNS AS HOUSE PLANTS 1 
Ferns! What does the word bring to mind? To me 
it recalls the outdoors; woodland, streamside, mountain 
slopes. Ferns suggest tropical forests and jungles; or, 
to let the thought run back in time, ferns call up vistas 
of ancient vegetation when no flowering plants existed. 
Then ferns were the predominant plant type, and from 
the dead ferns and similar plants of that period, by some 
extraordinary reduction process, we have coal. 
But ferns are not merely denizens of the wild, remote 
and untamable. They are a common sight along city 
streets, in store windows. Retail florists’ shops show 
dozens of plants. Commercial growers throughout the 
country raise literally millions of fern plants every year, 
and these find their way eventually into hundreds of 
thousands of homes. What characteristics have ferns 
that make them the most successful of all house plants? 
If you will let your thought seek for a moment the 
distinguishing feature of ferns, you will realize that their 
individuality is expressed almost entirely in their leaves. 
The word “fern-like” presents a picture of a feathered 
leaf, with serried leaflets along two sides of a median 
stalk. Such a leaf may be long and narrow, or short 
and broad; the division may lie reduplicated several 
times, but always the feathered cutting suggests a fern. 
As a matter of fact, ferns offer also leaves of all im- 
aginable shapes, simple and undivided, hairlike or broad, 
mosslike or leathery, clinging, et al. 
Reprinted from American Feiin Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1922. 
