












22 THE BRITISH FERNS. 
which the species is met with. The form called molle, which we take 
to be the A. molle of Roth, is a dwarfish plant, growing from one 
to two feet high, of lax habit, and having rather distant pinne. The 
pinnules are oblong bluntish, having a broad attachment, and are 
more or less obviously connected at the base by the narrow wing of 
the rachides ; they are pinnatifid, the lobes oblong, and the lowest 
two or three-toothed, the rest notched or simple. The larger states 
of this form, in Which the pinnules become more distant, rather less 
conspieuously united at the base, and rather more deeply toothed, 
correspond with an authentie specimen of the Polypodium molle of 
Schreber, in the Smithian herbarium. Itis a common plant, and 
is met with under several conditions, differing in size and in the 
degree of toothing and of confluence in the pinnules, the larger 
forms merging into trifidum. This latter, believed to be the 4. 
trifidum of Roth, is a somewhat larger plant than molle, and equally 
common. The pinnules are in this case more distinet, oblong- 
lanceolate in form, rather larger at the base on the anterior side, 
and cut half way to the midrib into lobes, the majority of which, 
in the more characteristic plants, are entire at the edges, and three- 
toothed at the apex. The sori are near to the midrib, and often 
become confluent. A general view of the distribution of these forms, 
representing the common state of the Lady Fern, has already been 
given. à 
The Lady Fern is, perhaps, of all our British species, the most 
prolific of varieties; and these varieties are often very marked. 
Taking the moderately divided forms above noted as types of the 
species, we find one series of forms differing in having their pinnules 
much more confluent or united, and another conspicuously distinct 
in having their pinnules much more divided, the forms belonging to ` 
the latter group being unquestionably among the most elegant of our 
wild Ferns. There are also considerable differences in the fructi- 
fication, running nearly parallel with the differences in the division 
of the fronds, but in some forms very highly developed as regards 
the frond itself, the fructification has not hitherto been discovered 
otherwise than in an abortive state. These are differences which 
occur among what may be considered as the normally developed 
forms of the species. The long series of abnormally developed 

