480 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ June IT, 1886. 
by tbe most striking characteristics. Hence a botanist whose 
specialty is the discovery of new species only would readily 
detect an altogether new plant, but fail to note that one 
amongst a crowd of familiar plants possessed unusual features. 
As an instance of this, I recollect once hunting over a lot 
of Scolopendriums with a good general botanist, and I found 
no less than seventeen ramose and otherwise abnormal plants 
among them before he found one, yet in his own element he 
would point out an uncommon flower on the other side of a 
field where I could hardly discern a plant at all. To this 
may be attributed the fact that so few abnormal exotics, and 
especially tropical Ferns, have been found, though I venture 
to think the quest is worth while ; for let the scientist term 
them monstrosities if he will, I contend that in many cases 
the abnormal forms infinitely transcend the normal ones in 
beauty,! while admitting freely that, on the other hand, 
many are far more curious than beautiful. Anyone who has 
seen a grand specimen of Lastrea cristata, our nearest ap¬ 
proach to a Tree Fern, and splendidly tasselled, must admit 
that such a cresting on Dicksonia antarctica or a fine Cyathea 
dealbata would be simply magnificent, and I am sure that 
somewhere in the untravelled habitats of these Ferns their 
crested forms are quietly awaiting their discoverer. 
In connection with this power of crestation I would ask, 
'What is the parallel phenomenon in flowering plants ? 
Hardly, I think, the doubling of the flowers, though that 
suggests itself as a near approach; yet from the fact that 
the sterility which is usually attendant upon such doubling 
is associated in the Ferns with the plumose and not the 
crested varieties, I think the connection should be looked for 
there; the extremely foliose character of such forms seeming 
to absorb all the vigour of the plant, so that spores are either 
altogether or almost absent, precisely as the multiplication 
of the flower petals seems to affect the seed producing parts 
of the flower. This idea I only throw out for discussion. 
Here again the most marked instances of variation in the 
plumose direction have been wild finds. Dr. Wills’s Scolo- 
pendrium crispum, for instance, has deeply curled fronds of 
normal strap-shaped outline, but much wider—over 4 inches 
in some cases. The Axminster and Horsfall plumose Athyria 
were also found wild : and to cut this part of my paper short, 
so were the greater part of the abnormal forms in cultivation; 
though, thanks to the selection of some of our careful culti¬ 
vators, such as Col. Jones of Clifton and others, the offspring 
of such finds have been found to develope their characteristic 
beauties to a far greater extent than the parents, some of 
Col. Jones’s Polystichums especially, the result of selection 
and hybridisation being apparently the ne plus ultra of 
feathery delicacy. 
I have alluded several times to the constancy of such 
variations, but there are some curious exceptions to this rule, 
as every Fern-hunter knows to his cost. Many of the most 
marked and beautiful forms yield common progeny, and also 
are apt to “sulk” as it is termed, and refuse to produce 
anything but normal fronds unless grown exactly as they 
like it. One of my own best finds affords the most remark¬ 
able instance of this instability that I know of. In 1884 
while in Scotland I found near Kilmarnock a really splendid 
form of Lastrea Fiiix mas polydactyla; in fact the most 
polydactylcus form by far which had been seen. The plant 
had five or six huge fronds, all with beautifully pendulous 
pinnae tasselled with as many as twenty divisions. I brought 
it to London and displayed it with great pride to some of the 
best judges, who one and all decided that it was a thorough¬ 
bred beauty, as it was profusely covered with spores. I care¬ 
fully gathered some from the best parts of the frond and 
sowed them. The plant being deciduous the foliage disap¬ 
peared in the winter, and the following season I watched the 
rising crown in confident anticipation of a finer and more 
symmetrical plant than the removal and travelling had per- 
f Compare the normal Athyrium with the best plumosum, and the 
difference is as great as between a common goose feather and that of an 
ostrich. 
mitted it to be the previous season. Judge, then, of my 
disgust when a common Fiiix mas was slowly developed 
without even the simple merit of the normal form, for many 
of the pinnae were deformed and depauperate. Later on a 
frond or two arose with faint signs of division on the apices 
of the pinnae ; meanwhile the young ones began to arise from 
the spores, one and all common Male Ferns. Another exactly 
similar plant found at the same place, but some 20 yards 
distant, in the succeeding week by a cousin of mine, showed 
slightly crested pinnae here and there, and that was all- 
verdict, a rogue. Still I would not despair, and though this 
year perhaps it might get over its sulkiness, the spring comes, 
and slowly rises the shuttlecock-like circle of fronds, all 
common again except a few deformities ; then an odd frond 
rises, pinnae slightly crested, then another, and ho ! it is 
heavily tasselled and as beautiful as could be desired. 
Meanwhile the seedlings have been developing fronds 
4 to 6 inches high, all common with the exception of two, 
which in the prothallus stage it had transferred to a. Todea 
superba frame, these two heavily tasselled from the beginning. 
I wait a little, and behold here and there generally there are 
fronds arising among the seedlings which promise not only 
to equal the parent at its best but even to surpass it. Here 
is inconstancy with a vengeance, but by no means one of the 
worst cases, for many a presumed good find has reverted 
altogether when removed from its birthplace, never displaying 
its peculiarities again. 
That this capacity of sudden variation is not always con¬ 
fined to a single spore is evidenced by the fact that under 
cultivation instances have been known where a number of 
exactly similar plants have appeared which have bsen ex¬ 
tremely different from the parent. I have a very dwarf and 
congested form of Blechnum Spicant raised from B. S. strictum 
of Barnes, of which I am informed by the raiser fifteen plants 
made their appearance, yet no one would credit the parent 
with such offspring unless on the very best evidence. A 
still more remarkable case occurred some short time back 
amongst my own sowings. I sowed spores from a very finely 
cut form of plumose Athyrium (A. F.-f. plumosum elegans, 
Parsons ) of purely normal outline, yet among a large batch 
of plants only one resembled the parent; the whole of the 
rest were heavily crested on tips of frond and pinnas, most of 
them symmetrically, but some were irregular. As the sowing 
was a very special and unmixed one and duly registered, 
and as, moreover, I have never sowed spores from a plant 
similar to the resulting ones, I am quite sure of their origin. 
They all, moreover, possess the plumose character of the 
parent. 
It is a well-known fact that Ferns otherwise normal 
develope occasionally some local eccentricity which is liable 
to affect the spores borne in its immediate vicinity. There 
is, for instance, a very finely crested Gymnogramma (G. 
Laucheana grandiceps) raised by Dixon of Hackney, some 
years ago, and the raiser informed me that upon an ordinary 
plant of G. Laucheana he noticed the tip of one of the pinnae 
merely dilated, and as it bore some sori he sowed it, the 
result being a house full of densely crested plants. It has, 
therefore, suggested itself to me that many of the varieties 
found may originate in a similar way, though this of course 
does not detract one iota from the singular transformation 
of the germ which must precede the appearance of the trans¬ 
formed plant. It is also manifest from the case of the plu¬ 
mose Athyrium just described that the abnormality is by no 
mean 3 necessarily visibly shown in the parent. The most 
common form of variation is that of crestation, varying from 
merely division of the tip of the frond to an indefinite rami¬ 
fication of parts forming a ball like Athyrium F.-f. acrocladon. 
The other forms are enumerated, but may be roughly classed 
under the following heads—Depauperation, the extreme form 
of which is the reduction of the plants to mere midribs: 
Dwarfing, implying merely reduction in size : Congestion, 
where the spaces between the divisions are so reduced that 
the parts more or less densely overlap and crowd each other : 
