166 BRITISH FERNS 
and transferred to a garden, will continue to grow year after year. 
It has no decorative value at all. A diminutive form has been 

Fig. 186. O. lusitanicum. 
found in Guernsey, which is considered to be a distinct species, 
O. lusitanicum (Fig. 186). 
OSMUNDA REGALIS (Tue RoyAL FERN) 
(Plate XXIII) 
This grand Fern stands alone as a species in this country, and 
attains a great size, ten or eleven feet high, and in the upper reaches 
of the Dart we have seen it so robust and abundant as to resemble 
coppices at a short distance, the ground being a solid mass of the 
massive rootstocks, clothed densely with aerial rootlets like huge 
sponges. It exists in many places where moist and almost boggy 

Fig. 187. Osmunda regalis (pinnule). 
conditions prevail, and attains its largest size on the banks of streams, 
on islands in the lake districts, and similar habitats where its 
feet, so to speak, are bathed in moisture. Its huge fronds spring in 
clusters from definite centres of the rootstocks described, and. are 
twice or thrice divided into pinne as shown in Fig. 187, the fruc- 
tification being confined to the tips of the fronds where the leaty 
portion disappears, and is replaced by branched masses of. un- 
covered spore capsules which, when ripe, are of a brownish tint, 






