This little fer, as its specific name hyperborea expresses, is truly northern in its range. This is, however, very wide, extending round the boreal world in Europe, Asia, and America. In Europe it is especially found in the highest latitudes, and when it occurs further south it is only at lofty elevations. It is frequent throughout Norway, the northern part of Sweden, Lapland, Finland, and North Russia, growing in the crevices of exposed granitic ad basaltic rocks. It does not occur in calcareous districts. In the mountain ranges of Europe the Woodsia is a scarce species, though locally abundant in a few spots. In the Alps it occurs in several places, as on Mont Cenis, Mont St. Gothard, Zermatt, the Upper Engadine, &c. ; in the Tyrol it is fournd in abundance at the Seiser Alp and in the Oetzthal ; and in the Pyrenees in two spots, one on the Maladetta. There are also isolated localities in Carinthia and Silesia, and the plant also grows in the mountains of Corsica and Sardinia.
In the British Isles this is one of our rarest species, and there are but three localities. One of the was known so long ago as about 1680--the moist rocks of Clogwyn y Garnedd, facin the east on one of the highest points of Snowdon, North Wales. There it was first discovered by Mr. Lhwyd (from whom there is a specimen in Buddle's herbarium in the British Museum), and it stil grows there. Mr. Newman refers Lhwyd's plant to the next species ; but so far as can be judged from the specimen just alluded to which is imperfect, it is W. hyperborea. The other two localities are in Scotland--on Ben Lawers, Perthshire, and in Glen Isla, in the Clova Mountains of Forfarshire. The similarity of the fronds to the leaves of the common Red-Rattle (Pedicularis sylvatica) has often been noticed, and the resemblance is embodied in the original name given to the Snowdon plant by Lhwyd.
Beyond the boundaries of Europe, W. hyperborea grows in the Ural Mountains, in the Songarian district, the Amur and Manschuria, and extends as far as Mongolia and Northern China. These Asiatic forms have been named as distinct species by Russian botanist (W. pilosella, Rupr., W. asplenioides, Rupr., and W. subcordate, Turcz). There is also a southward extension of the range of the plant in the Himalaya Mountains. In America the species is confined to high northern latitudes, only occurring in Canada as far as the Saskatchawan, and not reaching southwards into the United States. It has been doubtfully recorded for Iceland, but does not occur in Greenland.
The localities of this fern are quite similar to those of W. hyperborea, but it is more frequently met with, and has a wider distribution. In Great Britain, for instance, we have seven or eight stations for it. Besides the three given under the last species--all of which produce this alos--the plant occurs in several places near Moffat, Dumfriesshire, and on the border of that county and Peebles ; it also extends into England, being found on the rocks at Falcon Clints, in Teesdale, Durham (a locality remarkable for its Alpine flora at a low elevation), and in Westmoreland. In Wales, it was recently discovered on Cader Idris, by Mr. James Backhouse.
In Northern Europe this fern is frequent through the Scandinavian peninsula, and extends into the Artic regions, reaching Nova Zemlia and Iceland. It belts the plar regions, occurring in Greenland and Labrador, the northern parts of Canada, raching to Unalaskka, Alaska, regions it has a wide distribution in the mountain districts of Europe, Asia, and America. It does not seem to occur, however, in the Swiss Alps, nor in the Pyrenees, but is found in Tyrol and Hungary ; and there are stations for it in Bohemia, Silesia, Hesse, and other parts of Germany. Eastward it reaches the Crimea, Southern Russia and the Caucasus, and further into the central Asiatic regions of Siberia and Dahuria, and reaches Japan. On the American continent it is frequent in Canada and the United States as far south as Carolina, especially along the chain of the Rocky Mountains.
Woodsia alpina and woodsia ilvensis.
Out of Europe the plant is found to extend eastward through the Ural and Baikal districts of Siberia, and as far as Kamptschatka ; whilst on the American continent there are several localities known in Canada, in the Rocky Mountains, and the plant is recorded from Labrador, and from Disco, Greenland.
The species of Woodsia are not very frequently met with in cultivation, although they are grown with little difficulty if properly treated. The drainage of the posts must be fully provided for, the soil being a mixture of fibrous peat and silver sand, with a small portion of loam. They succeed best in a northern aspect, and require plenty of water durig the growing period.
The fronds are, in some of the larger species, such as D. antartica, as much as two or three yards in length and two feet or more across ; but their more usual dimensions are from one to two feet long and from six inches to a foot broad. In some species, such as D. moluccana, from Java, the stems are thickly furnished with strong hooked prickles ; in others they are densely clothed at the base with a thick coat of yellow-brown, often shining, hairs ; the stems of D. Sellowiana, from tropical America, are so densely clad with long fulvous hairs, changing to brown or blackish, that Mr. Spruce says they "precisely resemble the thighs of the howling monky."
The so-called "Tartarian" or "Scythian lamb", about which strange stories were told by early travellers, is the long caudex of a plant of this genus (D. Barometz) : this is covered with long silky hairs, which look like wool when old ; and by judicious manipulation the natives of Southern China (where the fern grows) convert it into a rough resemblance to a lamb, the caudex being invered, and supported on the bases of four of the lower fronds. The true history of the "lamb" was not known until 1725, when Dr. Breyne, of Dantzig, published a description of it as it really existed. In a curious folio volume, published in 1791, entitled "Museum Britannicum, or a display in thirty-two plates, in antiquities and natural curiosities, in that noble and magnificent cabinet the British Museum", by John and Andrew von Rmsdyk, there is a striking figue of a specimen which is still to be seen in the public gallery of the Department of Botany in that institution. The authors, althouh speaking of it as a "zoophye", state, accurately enough, that "it is nothing but the root of a plant much like fern" ; but they quote, as "very singular and amusing", the following description of it from "Les Voyages de Jean Struys", which, as it shows the notions which were formerly entertained concerning this "strange plant-animal", we here quote. "This surprising fruit has the figure of a lamb, with the feet, head, and tail of this animal distinctly formed : whence it is called, in the language of the country, Bonnarez or Boraner : each of which Muscovite names signifies little lamb. His skin is covered with a down very white, and as fine as silk ; the Tartars and Muscovites esteem it very much, and the greater part keep it carefully in their houses, where this author has seen many. It grows on a stalk of about three feet in height ; the place by which it holds is a sort of navel, on which it turns and bows itself towards the herbs which serve it for noursment, dying and withering away as soon as these herbs fail. Wolves love it and greedily devour it, because of its resemblance to a lamb. All this description contains noting hitherto incredible ; but what the author adds, that this plant has really bones, blood, and flesh, whence it is called in the country by a Greek name Zophyte, that is, a plant-animal".
Scythian Lamb.
The three figures on the left of the cut are adapted from old representations of the "Lamb" ;
while theactual rhizome with fronds springing from it is shown on the right.
Those woho are interested in learning further particulars of the history of the"Scythian Lamb", and of the fictions and traditions which were associated with it, will find abundant material in Breyn's "Dissertatiuncula de Agno Vegetabili Scythico, Borametz vulgo dicto", published in the "Philosophical Transactions" (vol. xxxiii, pp. 353-360). The treatise is accompanied by a striking representation of the object described, of which the upper figure in the accompanying cut is a much reduced copy. The plant was introduced into cultivation in England about fifty years ago by the late Mr. John Reeves ; the living specimens transmitted by him bore fruit in the Birmingham Botanic Garden, and were shortly afterwards described by Mr. John Smith under the name of Cibotium Barometz--the genus Cibotium being now more usually united with Dicksonia.
It is not surprising that so remarkable a plant should have received the
honours of poetical treatment. Darwin, in the "Botanic Garden", thus summarises
its traditional history :--
<<Cradled in snow and fann'd by artic air,
Shines, gentle Barometz ! thy golden hair ;
Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends ;
Crops the gray coral moss and hoary thyme,
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime ;
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
Or seems to bleat, a vegetable lamb.>>
The Sieur du
Bartas, at an earlier period, likewise honoured the plant with a description in
which its paradoxical nature is forcibly brought out. Having depicted the
amazement of our first parents when such a prodigy of nature first presented
itself to their astonished gaze, he piously continues : --
<<O merveilleurx effect de la dextre divine !
La plante a chair et sang, l'animal a racine ;
La plante comme en rond, de soy mesmes se meust ;
L'animal a des pieds, et si marcher ne peut ;
La plante est sans rameaux, sans fruit, et sans feuillage ;
La plante a belles dents, payst son ventre affamé
Du fourrage voysin ; l'animal est
sémé.>>
Scythian Lamb.
Copied from the title-page of Parkinson's "Paradisus", 1629.
Judging from specimens brought to this country, it is difficult to imagine that the resemblance can ever have been considered a striking one.
The silky hairs covering the base of the stem of this, or of a closely allied species, have been used as a styptic in Germany, being imported from Sumatra. The similar hairs of other species of Dicksonia, natives of the Sandwich Islands, are exported, to the extent of many thousands of pounds annually, under the name of Pulu, and are employed in the stuffing of mattresses, cushions, &c. ; and the hairs of D. Culcita are used in like manner in Madeira. Not more than two or three ounces of hair are yielded by each plant, and it is reckoned that about four years must elapse before another gathering can be obtained.
It is, however, the sori that are particularly noticeable, as they are usually produced in great abundance. They are large, nearly one-quarter of an inch in diameter, sub-globose, and each one occupies nearly the whole segment, which then, instead of being toothed, is dilated, and with a rounded deflexed margin. Their structure is peculiar, and differs from that of all the other European ferns. The very large, thick, brown indusium is attached by a semi-lunar base below thesorus, and at first is united by its upper edge to the deflexed margin of the segment, so that the whole forms a thick marginal case, rounded, but flattened on the top. Afterwards this separates, and the indusium exhibits an entire semi-circular free margin, or lip, whilst an upper lip is formed by the margin of the segment ; at length the lower lip becomes separated also at the sides and deflexed. The sporangia are small, very (paraphyses) ; they open by a transverse chink, and possess a complete oblique annulus.
A special interest attaches to this fern from its being the only member of the great tropical group of the Cyatheaceæ which reaches Europe. Its footing, indeed, on this continent is but slight, consisting of, as far as known, but a single locality in Southern Spain, discovered in 1869. This is near Algeciras, the little town which faces Gibraltar across the bay.
The head-quarters of D. Culcita are, apparently, in the Azores Islands, where it is very abundant in the woods, especially at an elevation of rom 2,000 to 3,000 feet. There are specimens in the British Museum from S. Miguel, collected by Masson so far back as 1778. In Madeira the plant is not now common, being chiefly found near S. Vincent and on the north-west side of the island. When we add Teneriffe to its localities, we have traced the whole range of this species, which will be thus seen to be a marked member of that peculiar Atlantic flora of which a few species reach our western shores. The fern does not occur in the Canary Isles ; and the species from the mountains of Central America and theWest Indies, often referred to D. Culcita, is an allied species--D. conifolia, Hook.
Another name for this fern is Balantium Culcita, Kaulf.