Of the first pair it is impossible to have too
many. The Christmas fern, with its glistening leaves of holly green, has
a stout, creeping rootstock, which must be firmly secured, a few stones
being added temporarily to the hairpins to give weight. The Evergreen
Wood-fern and Ebony Spleenwort, having short rootstocks, can be tucked
into sufficiently deep holes between rocks or in the hollows left by
small decayed stumps, while the transplanting of the Rock Polypody is an
act where luck, recklessness, and a pinch of magic must all be combined.
You will find vast mats of these leathery little Polypodys growing with
rock-selaginella on the great boulders of the river woods. As these are
to be split up for masonry, the experiment of transferring the polypody
is no sin, though it savours somewhat of the process of skin-grafting.
Evan and I have tried the experiment successfully, so that it is no
fable. We had a bit of shady bank at home that proved by the mosses that
grew on it that it was moistened from beneath the year through. The
protecting shade was of tall hickories, and a rock ledge some twenty
feet high shielded it from the south and east.
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