SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
US 
Many other of our British ferns are interesting. 
We have the hart’s-tongue and male-fern, the latter 
much used in medicine by the herbalists, and still in 
the pharmacopoeia ; but more peculiar than any others 
are the adder’s-tongue and moon-wort. The former 
took its name from the Dutch adderstong, and was at an 
early period called Nedderis gras and Nedderis tonge, 
from its curious fertile spikelet of spores, standing up 
in the one ovate leaf. The moon-wort is so called from 
its leaves being pinnately divided into half-moon¬ 
like segments. These plants are called by botanists 
Ophioglossum vulgare, L., and Botrijchium Lunaria , L. 
But of all our English ferns none is more beautiful in 
its haunts than the brake or bracken ( Pteris aquilina , 
L.), a plant of wide distribution, as, indeed, is the 
genus to which it belongs. It brings with it the 
thoughts of the moor and hillside, purple with 
heather, golden with furze, and mottled with every 
shade of red and brown by the dying bracken, a 
word which is evidently the plural form of brakes, 
applied to the fern by a transfer to the plant of its 
place of growth. The plant is said to have Solomon’s 
seal, the double triangle, in its rootstock, if cut trans¬ 
versely. 
The liverworts (Hepaticce marchantiacece, etc.) are a 
small order of membranous leaves, plants with curious 
peltate receptacles or cup-shaped vessels. They love 
damp situations, but are not mentioned by the poet. 
Mosses ( Musci) are, however, so mentioned. We 
get— 
Bring thee all this ; 
Yea, and furr’d moss besides, when flowers are none. 
Cymbeline , IV. ii. 226, 
where it is probable that he refers to one or more ot 
the elegant feather mosses (Hypnacese) which deck 
every shady bank with a feathery undergrowth, and 
8—2 
