

82 BRITISH FERNS 
Sana 
A NES 
PENZA 
26 2 
РНИИ S 


Fig. 47. Athyrium filix-famina (pinna). 
ATHYRIUM FILIX-F MINA (THE LADY FERN) 
(Plate VIII) 
This species, which ranks among the most beautiful of our native 
ones, was named by the old botanists long before the actual life 
history of the Ferns had been worked out and their peculiar 
method of reproduction ascertained. The botanical name given is 
a mixture of Greek and Latin, of which the popular name of Lady 
Fern, a polite equivalent of the Female Fern, is a true translation. 
Obviously the species was so christened owing to its greater delicacy 
of make and cutting as contrasted with its coarser companion, 
Lastrea (Nephrodium) filix-mas, the Male Fern, which, again, is a 
correct translation, but which, again, is a misnomer, since both 
species reproduce themselves on the ordinary lines as set forth in 
our chapter on the Life History of the Ferns, and as Ferns proper 
are not practically of any sex at all. Nature, however, curiously 
enough, has appeared to sympathize with the old botanists’ idea 
of the lady-like character of this species by endowing it with the 
faculty of inventing and donning innumerable fashions, many 
of extra beauty, and many of as bizarre, quaint, and eccentric 
types as the most gifted costumiere could devise in the way of laces, 





