200 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
January 1878, I noted that there was "a great deal of P. vulgare"
on hedge-banks between Chignal and Pleshey. A fortnight later
I saw it "very fine, with its vars, serratum and denticulatum,"
around Berners (commonly called "Barnish") Wood, at Berners
Roothing. To-day, the Polypody is not only infinitely less
common than it was throughout the whole of that district : it
may even be described as scarce there—a fact to which I can
testify as a result of a cycle-trip I recently (September 1922)
made through most of the Roothing parishes.
Similar evidence comes from other parts of the county.
In the early part of last century, the Polypody grew very
abundantly in Epping Forest, chiefly on the crowns of the old
pollarded hornbeams and oaks, which were often most pictur-
esquely crowned and festooned by it. Edward Newman wrote
in 1840" :—"In Epping Forest, I have often seen it ornament-
ing, with its bright green fronds, the heads of the pollarded horn-
beams, when the wintry blast has stripped them of their summer
verdure." My own acquaintance with the Forest (particularly
that part lying north of Epping, including Wintry Wood) extends
back to 1869. I was then quite a small child, but I can remember
very distinctly the masses of fronds of Polypody which then
covered the crowns cf many of the trees, especially in that part
of the Forest indicated." But go there now and see how many
trees are still festooned in this way. Peradventure there may
be a couple of dozen !
The same thing has occurred in the extreme north-east of the
county. Mr. J. C. Shenstone writes me :—"When I began to
study the Essex flora in 1875, one found Polypody abundant
under the shadow of oak trees growing in hedgerows on sandy
tracts in the vicinity of Colchester. I can recall several colonies
beside roads in Tendring Hundred, others between Colchester
and the Blackwater, as well as others elsewhere. When I left
Essex in 1907, these colonies, if not extinct, had become sadly
depleted."
Now why should the Polypody in particular be disappearing
in this way ? The reasons given above for the disappearance
or decrease of other ferns seem applicable to it to a small extent
only ; for it does not grow in bogs which are liable to be drained
5 British Ferns, p. 33 (1840) ; 2nd ed., p. 110 (1844); 4th ed., 1865, p. 61.
6 I have never seen it flourishing so greatly on trees elsewhere, except in Parham Park, Sussex,
on 26 April 1879.