THE COMMON MOONWORT 
169 
May or June attains its perfect development.”* Mr. 
Newman also found tlie frond in the ensuing year in 
every respect perfectly formed, indeed, exactly in the 
state in which it is found in the early spring before 
development; while the frond for the next following 
year, though less perfectly formed, also had the fruit¬ 
ful and leafy portions distinct from each other. These 
observations being made in May, while the plant was 
still growing, the fronds of three successive years were 
distinguishable at the same time. 
The name botrychium is from the Greek boirys —a 
cluster, because of the likeness of the branched clusters 
of spore-cases to the form of a bunch or cluster of 
grapes. The English name of Moonwort is given on 
account of the lunate (or crescent-like) form of the 
pinnse in the British species. 
The Common Moonwort prefers dry, open, and ele¬ 
vated pastures and waste lands, and likes to skirt them 
under the shade of hedge-rows. It may easily be 
passed over, half hidden as it is among the herbage? 
for its height only varies from some two or three 
inches to six or eight; but once seen there is no mis¬ 
taking the double row of fan-shaped pinnse which form 
its sterile branch. The lower half of the plant consists 
of a smooth, erect, cylindrical, hollow stipes, whose 
base is clothed by the brown membranous sheath 
which had covered it while in bud. Above are the 
two separate branches of the frond, -— one branch 
spreading, leafy, oblong, pinnate, with its crest-shaped 
* Newman’s History of British Ferns , third edition. 
