May 10, 18S0. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
569 
FERN HUNTING.—I. 
By Charles T. Druery, F.L.S., F.R.H.S. 
Among the many naturalistic hobbies which, in our 
holiday rambles, impel our footsteps far from the beaten 
track, and lead them into the loveliest and most 
secluded glens and glades of rural nature, Fern hunting 
must undoubtedly claim a foremost place, since it is 
precisely in the dewy recesses of the wood and forest, 
in the nooks and hollows of the trackless moors, in the 
rock-strewn depths of the cascady glen, and in the 
chinks and crevices of the rugged hillsides and moun¬ 
tain peaks, that the ardent Fern hunter seeks the rarest 
species and oftenest reaps success. Taking up his 
quarters, let us say, in some quaint, quiet, and out-of- 
the-way village in Devon or Somerset, aimed with 
trowel and case, we see him sally forth, with springy 
step and eagle eye, 
On Ferny Treasure Trove Intent. 
Let us accompany him, and note the interesting points 
as they arise. Possibly we may learn something new, 
for we have reason to believe that popular knowledge 
in this direction is very scanty. Plunging into the 
first by-lane that presents 
itself, we become immedi¬ 
ately aware of two species 
of very diverse character — 
namely, the Hart’s-tongue 
(Scolopendrium vulgare), 
with its long, undivided, 
strap or tongue-like fronds 
peeping pendulously through 
the hedge; and the soft, 
prickly Shield Fern (Poly- 
stichum angulare), with its 
peculiar spiny twice divided 
fronds springing shuttlecock 
fashion round its central 
crown wherever it has room 
to assert itself. Plucking a 
frond of each as a memoran¬ 
dum of the find, we observe 
that while the back of the 
Hart’s-tonguefrond is striped 
obliquely with long thick 
sausage shaped lines of a 
brown powdery appearance, 
not unlike snuff, the Shield 
Fern is merely dotted over at 
the back with small round 
patches of the same brown 
character, each patch or heap 
being covered, however, with 
a small circular grey mem¬ 
braneous disc, attached, 
mushroom fashion, to the 
frond by a short stalk passing 
through the centre of the 
patch. This is called 
The Spore Cover or 
Indusium, 
and though now invisble 
in the Hart’s-tongue, exists 
as a thin membrane on each 
side of the heap, as may be 
seen if the spores be scraped 
off with a knife. It is 
visible at an earlier stage, but the spore and their cases 
as they develop first burst through, and then entirely 
bury it as they attain maturity. If we have a powerful 
lens, we may distinguish that these spore heaps or sori 
consist of innumerable shining brown capsules, nearly 
surrounded vertically by a ribbed ring, an extension 
of which forms the attaching stalk. This ring at 
maturity contracts so powerfully as to rupture the 
capsule and jerk the contained spores violently out to a 
considerable distance. This is best seen by putting a 
small pinch of freshly gathered capsules in the field of 
a microscope, when, under a low power, they are seen to 
burst as they dry, and to scatter their contents, like 
little bombshells, in all directions. Attached to the 
bases of the midrib of the fronds of the Shield Fern we 
perceive a quantity of thin brown scales, often \ in. or 
more long and half as wide, shaped roughly like a bird’s 
wing. These form a dense covering to the incipient 
fronds before they rise, and overlapping each other as 
they do, very efficaciously protect the interior of the 
coiled-up fronds from damage by the weather or in¬ 
trusive insects. As the fronds rise, uncoil, and 
lengthen, these become spread out more and more 
apart, and are eventually scattered over the entire 
length of the frond, giving the midrib a rough chaffy 
appearance, forming one of the characteristics of the 
family. Under a lens these scales form very pretty 
objects. By transmitted light they are seen to consist 
of a very delicate network of dark brown veins perme¬ 
ating a fine semi - transparent membrane, closely 
resembling goldbeater’s-skin. Such scales, though of 
widely diversified character, are common to nearly all 
Ferns, ranging from fine down to thick hairy masses, 
so plentifully produced on some exotics that they have 
been used as stuffing for furniture and kindred purposes. 
The Common Polypody. 
Leaving these minutiae, however, for more detailed in¬ 
vestigation at the end of the day, we secure the 
requisite material and pursue our way. We next come 
across a dense mass of the common Polypody (Poly¬ 
podium vulgare), revelling at the bases and even away 
up in the hollows of the limbs of some wide-spreading 
Oaks, whose leafy branches now bury the lane in true 
congenial Ferny shadow. Even in the crevices of the 
bark, which the ages have covered with moss and 
lichen, we can see little fronds of this Fern, but it is 
only in the leaf-mould at the foot or in the deeper 
hollows that the fronds attain their full size of possibly 
18 ins. In this Fern we observe at once several marked 
differences from the others. In the first place, instead 
of a separate crown or tuft, we find, rambling about in 
all directions in the loose leafy soil, or permeating the 
crevices in the bark, a long and apparently endless 
creeping, fleshy rootstock or rhizome as thick as one’s 
little finger, and branching irregularly here, there, and 
yonder. From this are thrown down the ordinary root 
fibres from its under surface, while the fronds spring 
up singly, and at irregular distances, instead of rising 
in a ring round a definite centre, or in a cluster, as do 
those of the Shield Fern and H art’s-tongue respectively. 
The fronds, too, are built on a plan about midway 
between those forms, resembling a coarse-toothed double 
comb, tapering more or less abruptly (in this respect 
the type varies much in different latitudes). The side 
divisions are not cut quite down to tli9 midrib, hence 
the fronds are called pinnatifi 1— i.e., once divided but 
incompletely, as distinct from pinnate, in which the 
side divisions are quite distinct from each other. The 
chief distinctive character of this Fern lies, however, 
in the bright golden yellow masses of spores which we 
perceive upon the backs of the fronds, looking under 
the lens like so many hundreds of oranges piled up 
carefully in hemispherical heaps, the fronds absolutely 
glowing with the brilliant patches. 
These spore heaps, generally round but sometimes 
oval, possess two characters which distinguish this 
species from all other British ones—viz., the brilliant 
yellow colour of the ripe capsules and their greater 
magnitude. A third character is the entire absence of 
an indusium, or even a rudimentary one, at any stage 
of development, a feature which has been adopted as 
the botanical sign for the Polypodiura family all over 
the world. Like many other hard and fast lines of 
this sort, however, it thereby includes manifest 
strangers in the family circle. Another less obvious 
but still decided character which distinguishes its 
structurally from the other British Polypods—viz., 
the Oak Fern (P. Dryopteris), Beech Fern (P. Phego- 
pteris), and Limestone Polypody (P. calcareum), is 
that the fronds have a sort of joint at the point of 
attachment to the rhizome, so that when they perish 
they are detached in the same way as the leaves of 
deciduous trees. The stalks of the other Polypods, 
on the other hand, simply die down and only disappear 
by decay. 
Development of the Fronds. 
The three Ferns so far found, differing as we have seen 
in many particulars, have, 
however, possessed one 
feature common to all the 
Ferns in the world, with so 
few exceptions that we need 
not notice them. This is 
the mode in which the 
rising fronds develop — a 
very noteworthy feature as 
it is one of the most 
distinctive, no flowering 
plant, with one or two 
exceptions equally insigni¬ 
ficant, presenting the same 
characteristic. This pecu¬ 
liarity is that the incipient 
fronds and all their 
divisions are rolled up 
spirally like a watch spring. 
This coil, as it is lifted 
from the root by extension 
of its stalk, gradually loosens 
and unfolds itself, its side 
divisions, which have been 
coiled up in like manner, 
following suit, as do the 
ultimate divisions, should 
the frond be a complex 
one. All the parts then 
proceed to develop and 
mature until the frond 
attains its full size by 
simple expansion of the 
parts which were already 
present in an incipient state 
when the fronds began to 
rise, even the future 
spore heaps being visible as 
whitish dots on the uncoil¬ 
ing portions. 
[To be continued.) 
-- 
NOTES FROM NEW SOUTH 
WALES. 
Sydney, March ‘loth .—With 5'66 ins. of rain during 
the last twenty-four hours, you may form some opinion 
respecting the excessive amount of moisture in these 
latitudes. In fact a man must be possessed of a good 
memory if he recollects accurately when we last had an 
entirely fine day. Of this fact you will be able to 
judge for yourself when I tell you that there has 
fallen rather more than 40 ins. since the 1st of January, 
though the register at the observatory records, I think, 
a little in excess of 38 in?, for the period alluded to. 
This condition, of course, is quite abnormal; in fact 
the rainfall for the first three months of the year, as 
yet, is the highest on record. Of course, this weather 
is favourable to the pastoralists, because green food is 
looking grand, and food plentiful everywhere. But 
agriculture, and horticulture too, is seriously feeling 
the effects of the persistent downpour. M my garden 
crops, even on the light sandy soils of this particular 
locality, fail to stand against it, while weeds—well, 
it would do an English gardener good to see the quality 
of these—are thriving everywhere, notwithstanding the 
wet. Hundreds of tons of Grapes have literally rotted 
on the Vines, and complaints are rife from vignerons 
and orchardists everywhere respecting present losses. 
