If you go back over these points, you will see that we have found a large number of differences between the flowering plants and the pines. Of these, the most important are the points (5) and (6), which alone would be enough to make us place the pines and flowering plants in separate families, though point (4) is also very important. We find, however, that the pines are more like the flowering plants than are any of the other families, so that they are the nearest relatives the flowering plants have, even though they are rather far-away ones.
PLATE III.
TREE FERNS, SHOWING THEIR TALL THICK TRUNKS AND LARGE LEAVES, WITH SMALLER FERNS GROWING BENEATH THEM
CHAPTER XXV.
FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES
Perhaps there is no family of plants so easy to recognise as the ferns. It is nearly always a simple matter to know whether or not a plant is a fern, for although there are hundreds of different kinds, they all have the family characters plainly marked.
We have not very many ferns growing commonly in England, for they generally require a moister air than is usual in this country. By far the commonest is the bracken, which grows in all parts of the country, and sometimes in very large masses (see Plate I.). Some people separate the bracken fern from the others, and speak of “bracken” and “true ferns,” but this is not at all correct, for the bracken is just as much a true fern as the others, only as it is so much commoner, people are apt to value it less.