To return, however, to the plants, let us notice how some particular families seem especially to like the light gravelly soil of the Forest district. Take, for instance, the St. John’s-worts, of which we have no less than six, if not more varieties. The common perforated (_Hypericum perforatum_) shines on every dry heath, and the square-stalked (_quadrangulum_) in all the damp boggy places. The tutsan (_Androsæmum_) is so common round Wootton that it is known to all the children as “touchen leaves,” evidently only a corruption of its name; and its berries are believed throughout the Forest to be stained with the blood of the Danes. The rarer large-flowered (_calycinum_) grows, though not, I am afraid, truly wild, in some of the thickets round Sway. In all the ponds, the marsh (_elodes_) springs up, whilst the creeping (_humifusum_) trails its blossoms over the turf of the Forest lanes, and the small (_pulchrum_) shows its orange-tipped flowers amongst the brambles and bushes. Take, again, the large family of the ferns, of which seventeen species are distributed throughout the Forest. First and foremost, of course, stands the royal fern (_Osmunda regalis_), which may be found from the sea-board to Fordingbridge, rearing its stem in some places six feet high, and covering in patches on the southern border, as at Beckley, nearly a quarter of an acre. It grows in Chewton Glen, in all the lanes in the neighbourhood, on Ashley Common, close to the Osmanby Ford River, and rears its golden-brown pannicles in the boggy thickets near Rufus’s Stone. But before it, in beauty, stands the lady-fern, with its delicate fronds and its tender green, growing in the open spaces of the beech woods, as at Stonehard and Puckpits, and bending over the Forest streams in large leafy clumps. Then, too, in all the large woods grows the sweet-scented mountain fern (_Lastrea Oreopteris_); and on every bank the hart’s-tongue spreads its broad ribbon-like leaves, and the fertile fronds of the hard-fern spring up feathery and light, whilst from the old oaks the common polypody droops with its dark green tresses. The common maiden-hair (_Asplenium Trichomanes_), too, hangs on the walls and Forest banks; and on Alice Lisle’s tomb, at Ellingham, the rue-leaved spleenwort is green throughout the whole year. On Breamore churchyard wall and Ringwood bridges grows the common scale-fern, whilst in the meadows of the Avon springs the adder’s-tongue’s green spear. Nor must we forget the brake, common though it be, for this it is which gives the Forest so much of its character, clothing it with green in the spring; and when the heather is withered, and the furze, too, decayed, making every holt and hollow golden.[281]