May 31, 1890, 
THE GARDENING WORLD 
615 
with its semi-double Apple blossom, known as the 
Chinese Crab ; P. malus floribunda, or Japanese Crab ; 
of Cherries, Cerasus Sieboldii, with its delicately- 
tinted flowers, and the All Saints Cherry, C. sem- 
perflorens, which may be said to be always in 
bloom ; also tbe Laburnums, mentioning particularly 
such varieties as Waterer’s and Parkesii ; of small 
trees and shrubs, Azalea mollis, and also the American 
or Ghent types, and especially the new double-flowered 
varieties of the former, which are invaluable for 
planting in any suitable soil; the Berberries, especially 
B. Darwini and B. stenophylla ; and Cytisus prieeox, 
the cream-coloured variety of the common Broom ; 
C. Andreanus, shown and certificated that day, with 
its petals stained with ruddy crimson ; Exocliordia 
(Spinea) grandiflora, with its fine large white flowers 
and ruddy foliage, which will make a bush 8 ft. 
through and 8 ft. high ; and the Cydonias, mention 
being made of one shown that day by Messrs. James 
Veitch & Sons, under the name of C. Moorlezi, having 
unusually numerous finely-formed deep crimson flowers. 
FRUIT PROSPECTS IN THE 
WEST OP SCOTLAND. 
"While it is quite opportune to speak of fruit prospects, 
it is perhaps premature to say we are to have a heavy 
crop of all hardy fruits this season, but judging from 
the blossom, not only in its profusion but also in its 
wealth of pollen and prominent appearance, if the 
weather be favourable for another week or more we shall 
have an enormous crop of all fruits with the exception 
of Plums, which are thin. Already Cherries are safely 
set, swelling fast, and exceptionally heavy, all sorts of 
them. I certainly have never seen such a profusion of 
blossom on Cherries as ours had this season, both on 
wall and standard trees ; and while writing on this 
subject I may remark that our trees are pruned on the 
extension principle, with the exception of a few very 
old trees that still have spurs crooked enough, and from 
which we gather fruit for culinary purposes only. 
Cherries gathered from crooked spurs are neither juicy 
nor sweet; indeed, may be said to possess nothing in 
common with their rivals on the young wood. This is 
obvious, as the sap cannot flow so freely in those 
crooked, warty-like spurs as it can in the straight 
young shoots. In pruning and training, the shoots of 
Morello, May Duke and others are laid in full length, 
and they keep furnished with blossom buds all along. 
With the former a huge mistake is often—indeed 
generally—committed; I refer to the too common practice 
of laying in every young shoot, crossing and inter¬ 
crossing till all becomes a hopeless mass of confused 
wattle-work. In well-managed Morello trees a good 
annual thinning is requisite, and this is best done as 
soon as the fruit is all off the trees, thus giving all the 
shoots left the full benefit of air and—while favoured— 
sunshine to plump up and finish their buds. Nor is 
this all ; a systematic course of disbudding from now 
onwards should have attention. 
Plums blossomed a little sparsely, and, as remarked 
above, are thinly set, but the bullfinches had their own 
share of the buds before we could prevent their inroads 
or satisfy their voracious appetites, and latterly we were 
obliged to use the gun—very reluctantly. Calling at a 
small place lately, where the lady is an enthusiastic 
gardener, I was asked if I thought we should have a 
good crop of Plums, and on examining the trees I found 
the finches had performed their work so amazingly 
well that they had not left a blossom bud on the trees. 
When told that the finches had devoured all the blossom 
buds, the lady exclaimed, “Oh, the bonnie little 
birdies! Who could think such things of them?’’ 
Their beauty is indisputable, but they really will 
devour every blossom bud on all sorts of fruit trees, and 
where it can be done ar good plan is to stretch black 
threads over the trees, attaching them to the points of 
branches at different elevations. If they once touch 
those threads they must be pretty hard pressed before 
they will return to the same tree. 
Pears blossomed well, and have set equally well ; at 
least all the varieties we grow. We are obliged to 
confine ourselves to the commoner sorts, as the finer 
varieties will not succeed. Apples are now (May 23rd) 
a show in themselves, and have been so for the past 
fortnight ; another couple of weeks should make our 
prospects for the fruit season complete, and if fine 
weather intervene, our prospects will be unques¬ 
tionably good. Small fruits are very plentiful, 
Currants especially so ; indeed, I have rarely seen such 
a heavy crop of Black Currants. These last year were 
very much thinned by the finches in early spring, and 
the Gooseberries were next to a failure through the 
depredations of these voracious rascals. This year we 
have happily fared better, but only through resorting to 
extreme measures. Now I observe the caterpillars are 
going to trouble us. 
Perhaps I may be pardoned for leaving the garden 
proper, and making a few remarks on the blossoms of 
trees other than culinary or edible fruit bearing. 
Strange to observe the difference in the blossoming of 
the wild Cherry as compared with our garden Cherry. 
While the latter was in bloom—actually white all 
over—the former was quite conspicuous by its sparse 
blossom. This seems strange, but perhaps the finches 
may account for the failure. Chestnuts in blossom are 
quite a sight just now, and any of those of large 
dimensions have a conspicuous appearance, even a long 
distance off. The Oaks too are densely blossomed 
(though quite unpretentious), so are Sycamores and 
the Mountain Ash (the common Ash is not advanced 
enough to indicate what it is to be like). I hope there 
is some truth in the old English proverb : 
“If the Oak’s before the Ash, 
Then you’ll only get a splash ; 
If the Ash precedes the Oak, 
Then you may expect a soak.” 
If there is any truth in it we may expect a dry 
summer, or at any rate one in which we may have an 
occasional “splash,” not wet days in succession, 
week in and week out, as in 1888. Hollies are densely 
covered with blossom, giving prospect of abundance of 
berries for Christmas, which, by the way, were scarce 
enough last Christmas. Some very old and large trees 
here have never 4 been known to fail till last year, and 
the failure seemed to cause general regret. On these 
same trees I’ve seen the berries hanging two seasons—a 
very uncommon thing—and the younger crop succeeding 
them, as it were, a little further afield. The sun 
shining on these trees in a summer evening is a sight 
not easily forgotten, and especially so after a shower of 
rain. Perhaps the wet season in 188S caused these 
trees to fail in fruiting. The excessive rainfall may 
have prevented the necessary ripening of the wood for 
the production of blossom. Certainly the blossom was 
as sparse in its season as was the berries in theirs. 
Hawthorns are just opening, and they too are, if 
anything, more densely covered with blossom than any 
tree yet enumerated. With all this profusion of 
blossom I may be permitted to observe it is usually 
looked upon as the precursor of a coming hard winter, 
with a deal of snow, or to use the old Scotch adage, 
“ Mony haws, mony snaws.”— J. Proctor, G-lenfinart. 
-—- 
FERN HUNTING.—IV. 
Our native Ferns embrace about forty species only, 
more or less according to whether the nomenclature 
adopted be that of the 
“Lumpers” or “Splitters,” 
the two parties into which scientific botanists are 
divided as regards the naming and defining of species 
generally. The “lumpers” adopt a broad classi¬ 
fication which ignores many details, and the ‘‘ splitters ” 
claim with considerable justice that many quite 
distinct species are thus lumped together in a manner 
not only confusing, but unpractical. Amongst our 
British Ferns, for instance, the “lumpers” class under 
the name of Aspidium the two quite distinct families 
of the Buckler Ferns (Lastrea) and Shield Ferns 
(Polystichum), though, as we have seen, their specific 
differences are immense, as not only do the spore-covers 
differ definitely in shape, but the whole character of 
the fronds in make, texture, &c., indicates most 
unmistakably the propriety of a distinct classification. 
The unpractical nature of the lumping system is 
speedily seen when a collection of plants begins to be 
made ; and though the large representative one at Kew 
is classified broadly, most amateur Fern fanciers are 
puzzled to find, as it were, their old familiar friends— 
Brown, Jones and Robinson—labelled indiscriminately 
under the alien name of Smith. 
We have said enough, however, to justify and 
explain the apparent vagueness in the number of 
species, which, taken roughly at forty, have yielded 
probably some four to five thousand distinct varieties, 
many, it is true, mere botanical curiosities, but many, 
on the other hand, of such marvellously delicate or 
ornate character that, speaking generally, they can 
hold their own against all the exotic Ferns so far intro¬ 
duced, size alone excepted. We do not, of course, 
mean to say that we can find a rival in its own special 
line to such an exceptionally beautiful tropical gem as 
Adiantum Farleyense, though, singular to relate, a 
Cornish find of our native Maidenhair (A. Capillus- 
Yeneris var. cornubiense) is identical in form but 
smaller; against such an exception, however, we can 
show a sport of another character, Athyrium F.-f. var. 
Xalothrix, for example, to which no exotic approaches 
n silky delicacy and glassy translucency. 
“Sports.” 
These varieties or sports, as we gathered from our 
recent experience, occur sporadically, and without any 
obvious peculiarity of habitat or position, and, in point 
of fact, although some localities are specially fertile in 
“finds” and others peculiarly barren, yet, speaking 
generally, if the common forms are plentiful, there is 
always a reasonable expectation that a close and 
careful search among them will yield abnormal forms of 
greater or less attractiveness. In fact, to throw off the 
mask and personify ourselves with our soi-disant 
guide, we may say that in a three weeks’ hunt in out 
of the way localities we have found on an average one 
“find” per day— i.c., a form of variation sufficiently 
marked and distinct to install for probation in our 
fernery. Several of these were really new and beautiful, 
— i.e., symmetrical and thorough, the aforesaid Lastrea 
montana (var. cristata gracilis) and Scolopendrium (var. 
corymbiferum) being especially fine. In the course of 
a day’s hunting, many oddities likewise are come 
across of an obviously inconstant character; these serve 
to maintain the interest which, however, rarely flags 
when once the requisite faith has been implanted in 
the hunter’s breast by the discovery of a few good 
things. 
The Lynton District. 
Our first good “finds” were made in the Lynton 
district some ten years ago. Taking a young fellow 
with us as a guide, we started thence in a rustic trap, 
for a day on Exmoor. Arrived at the ditch and bank 
which form the county boundary between Devon and 
Somerset, I alighted, made my way along the bank 
to see if anything worth having chanced to be in it, 
when to my disgust my guide suddenly called me back 
to know whether I hadn’t missed something, and there 
sure enough was a nice little clump of some thirteen 
plants of a rare variety of hard Fern (Blechnum spicant 
var. projectum)—no great catch in point of beauty, but 
there was the ugly fact that, posing as a Fern-hunter, 
we had allowed our guide to score first blood, though 
the quarry had lain close under our nose. 
We had our revenge, however, before the day was 
over. Towards evening, after a glorious, but as far as 
“ finds ” were concerned, fruitless ramble over the 
moor and about the banks of the incipient Exe, we 
reached Simonsbath, a little village near the centre of 
the moor. Here we put up for dinner at a little inn 
whither our trap had meanwhile been driven. While 
dining and audibly lamenting our small success, a 
labourer sitting in the corner remarked that there 
was a fine dyke full of Ferns a little way down the 
road, and this, as a last chance, we resolved to explore. 
A New Blechnum. 
Our companion, disregarding etiquette, went on in 
front of us, hastily taking stock of the innumerable 
seedlings which filled every chink, and had got some 
distance ahead, when we suddenly saw a single small 
but most extraordinary Blechnum frond peeping out 
of a chink through a mass of common ones. With 
breathless eagerness we pounced upon it, and to our 
intense delight found six other fronds like it, and all 
attached to the same plant, thus proving it to be a 
constant thing. Uttering a jubilant shout to our 
guide, we asked him, in our turn, whether he had not 
missed something, and with evident chagrin he had to 
confess the soft impeachment. In this plant the 
ordinary long smooth-edged pinnae, like the teeth of a 
comb, were all contracted in circular recurved and 
prettily serrated lobes, similar to small scollop-shells, 
the width of the frond being uniformly reduced to 
about i in. like a slender scolloped ribbon. The follow¬ 
ing season it threw up narrowed fertile fronds, which, 
true to the abnormal character, were mere slender 
sticks, with small knobs containing the spores. The 
progeny were all characteristic ; and this Fern, instead 
of being hid in a chink in the wilds of Exmoor, now 
figures at Kew and in most other collections as 
O 
Blechnum spicant concinnum. 
A few days later we set out for a stroll towards 
Woody Bay, near Lynton, under the guidance of a 
local collector, and here again, while tramping at a fair 
pace through a jhedge-lined lane, a heavily tasselled 
frond of the same species (Blechnum), hanging down 
the bank, arrested our steps, and another fine and 
constant variety, which must have been visible to 
every observant passer-by for several seasons at least, 
was the reward of our quick eyesight. 
