200 THE BRITISH FERNS. 
Ashurst Park, Tunbridge Wells, in 1857, by Mrs. Bolland, and 
is cultivated in the collections of Mr. Hankey and Mr. E. A. De 
Grave, of Fetcham, Surrey. The breadth of the fronds, the 
winged rachides, and the large wavy pinnules, give it a peculiarly 
distinct and interesting character. 
17. cristata (M.). This is doubtless the most beautiful, all points 
considered, among the British Ferns; for its tall, gracefully arching, 
symmetrically and boldly tasselled deep-green enduring fronds are 
certainly unsurpassed in elegance, and this notwithstanding that it 
is in a botanical sense, a monstrosity. Like many others of the 
monsters, however, that occur among the Ferns, it is reproduced 
almost without variation from the spores. The fronds are narrow 
lanceolate, with short rather distant pinnæ, which are narrowish and 
taper from the base upwards to the base of the tuft or tassel. This 
tassel, which occurs at the end of every pinna, consists of a large 
branched tuft of multifid-crisped segments, forming a very conspicuous 
frilled margin to the frond. The apex of the frond is also branched 
and multifid-crisped like the pine, only the tuft is larger and more 
distinctly ramose. The symmetrical character of this frilling, is one 
of its most beautiful features. The pinnules are oblong obtuse, sub- 
glaucous beneath, the stipites and rachides being golden-scaly, and 
the indusia inflected at the margin, as in paleacea (9), to which this 
form is evidently allied. The typical state of this variety, and the 
most beautiful so far as yet known, was found at Charleston, near 
St. Austell, in Cornwall; but other similar plants have been found in 
Devonshire, near Ilfracombe, by Mr. J. Dodds. Young plants are 
commonly symmetrical, though sometimes irregularly ramose, but 
they all at length assume the same characteristic form. [ Plate 
XXXVI—Folio ed. t. XVI A.] 
A sub-variety of this (prolifera, Woll.) raised from its spores, 
resembles it in being tasselled, but it is more erisped, and is depau- 
perated and laciniated. Its chief peculiarity consists in its bearing 
bulbils, generally on the external side of the stipites, near their 
junction with the tufted caudex. 
18. cristata angustata (M.). This is a handsome new variety, 
raised from the spores of cristata, and now sufficiently tested as to 
its constancy, the parent plant having been grown for several years, 

