THE POLYPODIES. 
319 
specimen ; so that its present ones are all the 
new growth under the conditions which we have 
described. 
But now for some detailed description of this 
delightful Fern. The Common Polypody is dis¬ 
tributed very generally throughout the United 
Kingdom. In the forks of trees; on pollard 
trunks; on garden walls and old ruins; in the 
moist crevices of rocks in mid-river; on moss- 
covered hedge-banks; almost everywhere on 
elevations above the ground level where accu¬ 
mulations of leaf-mould lie in hollows with 
pent moisture, will the Common Polypody grow, 
thriving most vigorously in situations where its 
roots are subject to the most favourable con¬ 
ditions of soil and moisture. 
Most appropriately is it called the Polypody — 
the many-footed Fern—for its rhizomas creep in 
all directions under its shady covering. From 
these thick, fleshy rhizomas—about a finger's 
thickness — grow its matted fibrous roots. These, 
thread-like, penetrate almost everywhere in a 
horizontal direction, growing and spreading with 
the progress of the rhizomas, from the upper sur- 
