"Maidenhair fern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sign," announced Aunt Emily with pride: "Maidenhair! It'll grow again. I've got the roots." And she said it as triumphantly as ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... and hemmed in with rocks and forest. A few simple flowers had been planted here and there, but its chief beauty was a mountain stream, brown and clear as the eyes of a dog, that fell from a crag above into a rocky basin, maidenhair ferns growing in such masses about it that it was henceforward scarcely more than a woodland voice. Beside it two great deodars spread their canopies, and there a woman sat in a low chair, a girl beside her reading aloud. She had thrown her ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... The Maidenhair tree—Gingkgo biloba—of which we give an illustration, is not only one of our most ornamental deciduous trees, but one of the most interesting. Few persons would at first sight take it to be a Conifer, more especially as it is destitute of resin; ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various
... etc.—Take two to four ounces of the infusion three or four times a day, when it is cold. The dose can be lessened and taken oftener. It may be sweetened with sugar when taken for the diseases named above. Also equal parts of cleavers, maidenhair, and elder blows, steeped in warm water for two or three hours and drank freely when cold forms an excellent drink in erysipelas, scarlet fever and measles. An infusion made with cold water is good to remove freckles; wash ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... made a pretty, polished shelf and screwed it on to the outside of the footboard, and the boys always kept this full of blooming plants, which they changed from time to time; the head-board, too, had a bracket on either side, where there were pots of maidenhair ferns. ...
— The Birds' Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that place," he said. "Imagine a great billowing sea of infinite shades of green, fronds waving everywhere, light, beautifully stencilled elk-fern, starting with a breadth of two feet and tapering to lengths of four or five; sword-fern shooting stiffly erect, and whole knolls mantled in maidenhair." ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... futile doily, but absurd little dresses with sleeves that she measured to the length of her hand, and yokes cut out to the pattern of a playing card, and all fretted over with feather-stitching that was frailer than maidenhair fern and must have cost many an eye-ache, which, because of its source, was ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... in the witchery of the spell she cast over him. Not the drooping maidenhair ferns through which she trailed were more delicate or graceful than she. But some instinct in him played surface commonplaces against the insurgent emotion of ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... bowl radiate long streamers of pale green ribbon ending at the plates of the guests with name cards decorated with the lilies cut out of watercolor paper. Half way between the bowl and the plate, the ribbon is knotted about a bouquet of the flowers or a bunch of maidenhair ferns which will become the corsage bouquet of the guest. Sometimes several strands of narrower ribbon are used giving more rays; a very pretty effect. Do not have artificial light at a summer breakfast. Garden flowers are all the rage, either one kind ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... by was a broad creek to which the bank sloped gently from the clearing. The creek, some three feet deep, murmured over coloured stones and sprouting trees. The long fine strands of the ice grass trailed far over the water, motionless. Huge bunches of maidenhair, delicate as green lace, clung to the steep bluffs on the opposite side. Forests of ferns grew close to the water's edge. Down through a rift in the cliffs tumbled a mountain stream ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... which is a native of Japan and China. It is called the Maidenhair tree, because its leaves resemble those ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 29, May 27, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... walk home, passing now under the sumac's palm-like canopy, and they saw the blue gleam of the singing river through red thickets. Soon they came to a bit of open ground, all overgrown with bronzed bracken, and maidenhair sere and pink, and blue-eyed asters and golden-rod. So high and thick were the breeze-blown weeds that the only place to set the feet was a very narrow path. Here Sophia walked first, for they could not walk ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the spring where the maidenhair fern grew thick and spread out wide, perfect fronds on slender brown stems, shading fairy bowers; and where taller ferns grew high and leaned over like a delicate fairy forest; and where the wild violets ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... the way. Amongst the palm family new to me was a very beautiful Licuala, perhaps the most beautiful of all fan-leaved palms, and a climbing palm, one of the rattans (Korthalzia sp.), with pinkish stems and leaves resembling a gigantic maidenhair fern, which looked very beautiful scrambling over the trees, together with two or three other species ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... grass, to prevent too quick ripening, but in some of the orchards the crop was ready, and workers were busy with ladders and baskets gathering their early harvests. It was a picturesque route, for the sides of the deep walls were covered with beautiful maidenhair ferns, and over the tops hung geraniums or clumps of white iris or purple stocks or clusters of little red roses. Here and there, at a corner, was a wayside shrine with a faded picture of the Madonna, and a quaint brass lamp in front, and perhaps some flowers laid there by loving hands; ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... circular central pool, wherein fat gold-fish went idly to and fro, nuzzling floating specks upon the surface. Through the polished green of the surrounding palms and rubber-plants stared gardenias and camelias; below, between maidenhair and sword-ferns, winked the little waxen blossoms of fuchsias and begonias: at intervals poinsettia flared audaciously among its more quietly dressed neighbors; and, in the far corners the golden spheres were swelling to fairly respectable proportions ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... Surrey, but it has been regarded as simply springing from the dead rotten wood, etc., at the base of the tree. As a matter of fact, however, this toadstool is traced to a series of dark shining strings, looking almost like the purple-black leaf stalks of the maidenhair fern, and these strings branch and meander in the wood of the tree, and in the soil, and may attain even great lengths—several feet, for instance. The interest of all this is enhanced when we know that until the last few years these ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... is especially adapted to the gown of the matron, or wherever a touch of lavender is desired. It is effectively combined with violets, or lilies-of-the-valley and maidenhair fern. The petals are made of satin ribbon one and one-quarter inches wide and of the peculiar pinkish lavender orchid shade. There are five petals in all—each calls for seven inches of ribbon. If possible, three of the petals should be one or two ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin
... interest. The good physician talks cheerfully with her, asks her a few questions. Then to her mother: "Good-wife, Margaret hath somewhat profited, as she telleth, by the goat's milk she hath taken night and morning. Do thou pluck a maniple—that is an handful—of the plant called Maidenhair, and make a syrup therewith as I have shewed thee. Let her take a cup full of the same, fasting, before she sleepeth, also before she riseth from her bed." And so they leave ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... immediately behind the Arch of Severus, bounding the Forum in this direction, are richly draped with the long, delicate fronds of the maidenhair fern. Shaded from the sun, it grows here in the crevices of the old walls in greater luxuriance and profusion than elsewhere in the city. There is something almost pathetic in this association of the frailest of Nature's productions with the ruins of the most ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... ablutions. Great rocks, that had fallen from the cliffs above, lined the shore; and amongst these grew many shrubs and plants new to me. The cliffs themselves were, in some parts, green with lovely maidenhair ferns, belonging to three ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... shin"—Adiantum pedatum—Maidenhair Fern: Used either in decoction or poultice for rheumatism and chills, generally in connection with some other fern. The doctors explain that the fronds of the different varieties of fern are curled up in the young plant, but unroll and straighten out as it grows, and consequently a decoction ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... water gave evidence of the sudden disappearance of several green-backed frogs, sunning themselves on a large, moss-grown rock, projecting above the water's edge; from shady nooks and crevices peeped clusters of early white violets; graceful maidenhair ferns, and hardier members of the fern family, called "Brake," uncurled their graceful, sturdy fronds from the carpet of green moss and lichen at the base of tree trunks, growing along the water's edge. Partly hidden by rocks along the bank of the stream, nestled a few belated cup-shaped ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... new suit Maurice walked up and down the little room, round and round the table, where on a turkey-red cloth a hideous hammered brass bowl held some lovely maidenhair ferns. The vision of Eleanor abasing herself to Lily was unendurable. To drive it from his mind, he went to the window and stood looking out through the fragrant greenness of rose geraniums, into the squalid street where the offspring of the Funeral ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... the Ginkgoaceae, now represented only by the isolated maidenhair tree, scarcely known in a wild state, offers another striking example of a family which can be traced with certainty to the older Mesozoic and perhaps further back still. (See Seward and Gowan, "The Maidenhair Tree (Gingko biloba)", "Annals ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... reached the pines and heath above. Then I knew the meaning of Theocritus for the first time. We found a well, broad, deep, and clear, with green herbs growing at the bottom, a runlet flowing from it down the rocky steps, maidenhair, black adiantum, and blue violets, hanging from the brink and mirrored in the water. This was just the well in Hylas. Theocritus has been badly treated. They call him a court poet, dead to Nature, artificial in his pictures. Yet I recognised this fountain by his verse, just ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... came in from the woods and rocks without her trophies. Rare, lovely mosses and bits of most delicate ferns, maidenhair and lady-bracken, tiny trails of wintergreen and arbutus, filled a great shallow Indian china dish upon her bureau top, and grew, in their fairy fashion, in the clear, soft water ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... grow well in a window. The maidenhair is very beautiful while it lasts, but it is a poor thing the second year unless it can be put into a greenhouse and ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... steep incline above the spring grew tiny maidenhair ferns, while higher up were larger ferns and brakes. Great, moss-covered trunks of fallen trees lay here and there, slowly sinking back and merging into the level of the forest mould. Beyond, in a slightly clearer space, wild grape and honeysuckle swung ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... were, As they were closely set, Of soft and dainty maidenhair A curious armillet. I, smiling, asked them what they did, Fair Destinies all three, Who told me they had drawn a thread Of life, and 'twas for me. They show'd me then how fine 'twas spun, And I reply'd thereto,— "I care not now how soon 'tis done, Or ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave (her heaving embon) red rose rose slowly sank red rose. Heartbeats: her breath: breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... hack all along the line. Our potatoes are buried in a jungle of autumn burdocks. Our radishes stand seven feet high, uneatable. Our tomatoes, when last seen, were greener than they were at the beginning of August, and getting greener every week. Our celery looked as delicate as a maidenhair fern. Our Indian corn was nine feet high with a tall feathery spike on top of that, but no sign of anything eatable about it from top ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... Agriculture—was disclosed to view. Beautiful streams gushed from rounded holes, fifty yards above the river. The rock walls reminded one of an ivy-covered castle of old England, guarded by a moat uncrossed by any drawbridge. It was trellised with vines, maidenhair ferns, and water-moss making a vivid green background for the golden yellow and burnished copper leaves which still clung to some small cottonwood trees—the only trees we had seen ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... vegetation in New Zealand and nowhere else will one find a greater variety of ferns. Some of them grow in the form of trees; some are huge vines; and still others are as fine and delicate as the maidenhair fern. Some kinds have fine wiry tendrils that are much used for mattresses and cushions. Another plant looks so much like a palm that no one ignorant of plants would suspect that it was not a palm-tree; but as a matter of fact it ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... delightful draught for thirsty mortals than from this little pool hidden away here in this mountain fastness? It is a place in which druids and wood-nymphs might revel, surrounded on all sides by stately trees and moss-grown rocks, fringed with ferns of all kinds, from the delicate maidenhair to the wide-spreading shield variety, bordered with blue and gold lupine (California's colors), and close to the falls, a bush thickly covered with white flowering dogwood blossoms, standing out like a rare painting against the green-and-brown background—a spot to thrill ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... to be seen, six feet in length; and yet on either side were camellias and tea-trees covered with red and white blossoms, orange-trees, laden with fruit; gold-fish swimming about in ponds, overhung with maidenhair fern, besides pteris and hothouse ferns, shaded by bamboos, palms, and castor-oil plants. The order of vegetation seems to be as much reversed as everything else in this strange country. In England all those plants ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... island. The rocky face of the cliff on either hand was splashed with colour from numerous small flowering shrubs that seemed to spring from invisible clefts in the basalt, while close down by the water's edge great clumps of maidenhair and other ferns grew in extravagant luxuriance. But these things were observed as it were subconsciously, every eye in the boat being fixed intently upon the little strip of beach toward which we were heading, while the ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... on aimlessly, noting, though scarcely conscious that she did so, the bush sights and scenes on either hand—clinging creepers and twining plants, dainty ferns, nestling in hollow trees, clusters of maidenhair under logs; pheasants that hopped noiselessly in the shade, and a wallaby track in some moist, soft earth. Once she saw a carpet snake lying coiled in a tussock and, springing for a stick, she ran at it, but the snake was too quick for her ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... made the scene a perfect one. The guests, arriving at ten o'clock, were ushered into the rustic breakfast room. Four tables were used. On one pure white damask napery was enlivened by low baskets of maidenhair fern, and sprays of the same delicate plant tied with baby ribbon of green gave a cool look to the whole. The largest table was resplendent with cut glass vases filled with golden-rod. White asters gave a hint of autumn's snow to the third table, ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... complaining notes: And sorrow Sits crowned upon her seat: nor any morrow Hears the Loves laughing round her golden chair. (Alas, thy golden seat, thine empty seat!) Nor any evening sees beneath her feet The daisy rosier flush, the maidenhair And scentless crocus borrow From rose and hyacinth their savour sweet. Without thee is no sweetness in the morn, The morn that was fulfilled of mystery, It lies like a void shell, desiring thee, O daughter ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... a broken staircase, where weeds grew in the gaps the steps had made in falling, and maidenhair hung on the darker side of the wall. I went up unwillingly, because the Italians used this old staircase as a privy, as ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... were not dimmed by their vivid neighbors at the end of the row of poles—the scarlet runners. The adlumia, or mountain fringe, was a special vine of our own and known by a special name—virgin's bower. With its delicate leaves, almost as beautiful as a maidenhair fern, and its dainty pink flower, it festooned the ripening corn as wantonly and luxuriantly as it encircled the snowball ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... French Barley, boil it in several waters till you see the water be clear, then take a quart of the last water, and boil in it sliced Licoras, Aniseeds bruised, of each as much as you can take up with your four Fingers and your Thumb, Violet Leaves, Strawberry Leaves, five fingered Grass, Maidenhair, of each half a handful, a few Raisins in the Sun stoned; boil these together till it come to a Pint, then strain it, and take twelve or fourteen Jordan Almonds blanched and beaten, and when your water is almost cold, put in your Almonds, and stir it together, and strain it; then ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... in very sheltered spots are banana-orchards which are never so snugly sheltered there but their broad leaves are whipped to shreds. The white road winds between gray walls crumbling in an amiable disintegration, but held together against ruin by a network of maidenhair ferns and creepers of unknown name, and overhung by trees where the cactus climbs and hangs in spiky links, or if another sort, pierces them with speary stems as tall and straight as the stalks of the neighboring bamboo. The loquat-trees cluster—like quinces in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... recognised the influence of Rabbet, being skilful to discern the gods who send diseases; and to cure Salammbo he had her apartment watered with lotions of vervain, and maidenhair; she ate mandrakes every morning; she slept with her head on a cushion filled with aromatics blended by the pontiffs; he had even employed baaras, a fiery-coloured root which drives back fatal geniuses into the North; lastly, turning towards the polar star, he murmured thrice the mysterious name ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... be glad to know if maidenhair ferns need much water, and how often they ought to ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... came into the room. Immediately upon his coming, conversation became general, and a few moments later the party was seated round a small table kept for intimate gatherings, and placed in the centre of the large teak-panelled room. An arrangement of plumbago and maidenhair, and pale blue shaded candles casting a dim light, carried out the saxe blue effect that Mrs. Wilder had evolved with the assistance of a ladies' paper that dealt with ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... this, however, Moncure Conway says that 'the only region on the Continent where any superstition concerning rue is found resembling the form it assumed in England as affecting the eye is in the Tyrol, where it is one of five plants—the others being broom-straw, agrimony, maidenhair, and ground-ivy—which are bound together, and believed, if carried about, to enable the bearer to see witches, or if laid over the door, to keep any witch who shall seek to enter fastened on ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... the aqueduct, always moist from the percolation, must form a charming exhibition of maidenhair ferns during summer-time, as the crevices were all occupied by plants, whose leaves, even at this season (February), were several inches ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the only bank the verse suggested was in the conservatory, a long, narrow ledge of ferns and maidenhair, green with overhanging vines and graceful fronds. For nearly half an hour they poked around in it, lifting the ferns from the warm, moist earth to see if anything lay hidden at their roots. It was like April in the conservatory, steamy and warm, ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... dwarf evergreen oak form graceful fringes along the narrower seams, wherever the slightest hold can be effected. Rock-ferns, too, are here, such as allosorus, pellaea, and cheilanthes, making handsome rosettes on the drier fissures; and the delicate maidenhair, cistoperis, and woodsia hide back in mossy grottoes, moistened by some trickling rill; and then the orange wall-flower holds up its showy panicles here and there in the sunshine, and bahia makes bosses of gold. But, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... single peony, a single iris, a single azalea, stalk, leaves, and corolla—all displayed in their full beauty. Can anything be more grotesque and barbarous than our "florists' bouquets," a series of concentric rings of flowers of divers colours, bordered by maidenhair and a piece of stiff lace paper, in which stems, leaves, and even petals are brutally crushed, and the grace and individuality of each flower ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... maybe, if only I could see with the same eyes—and I loved those ranges. I liked to steal away on a hot day into the deep fern gullies, where the tall green tree-ferns were high over my head, and the dainty maidenhair grew among the rocks and stones at my feet. And someone else loved those gullies too—it's all part of the story, dear, the same old story which comes to every woman at ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... with dove-colored upholstery and crystal vases of maidenhair fern and moss-roses; and often, in such a car, Linda went to the theatre with Judith or Pansy and some cousins. Usually it was a matinee, where their seats were the best procurable, directly at the stage; ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... straight to the sick room. She had rushed first into the conservatory and made frantic mad havoc amongst the roses there. The choicest blooms, any quantity of unopened buds, were cut by her reckless fingers. She gathered a whole quantity of maidenhair to mix with the roses, and then, a tender colour on her own cheeks, her dark eyes bright as well as soft, she appeared like a radiant vision before the tired, sad eyes of the ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... in its way, but sent at the florist's discretion, not chosen to suit her gown, and it did not suit it, so that she could not have used it in any case; yet she put it down with a sigh. The next was of yellow roses, violets, and maidenhair fern, very sweet: "With Lord Groome's compliments," she read on the card that was tied to it. "He is back then, I suppose," she thought. "Funny old man! Very sorry, but you won't do." The next was from one ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... their chairs all round by the walls, and the centre of the room is unoccupied, saving here and there maidenhair ferns and growing flowers. Now look at the picture in its fulness! and we see poor old bent and feeble bodies bowed with toil, and faces furrowed by unceasing anxiety; but the sun, the east wind, the sea air and Singholm have ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... of the conservatory is rich in reviving smells," Mr. Mool remarked. "Do I detect, among the delightful perfumes which reach us, the fragrant root-stock of the American fern? If I am wrong, Mrs. Gallilee, may I send you some of the sweet-smelling Maidenhair from my own little hot-house?" He smiled persuasively. The ferns were already justifying his confidence in their peace-making virtues, turned discreetly to account. Those terrible eyes rested on him mercifully. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... fluid Wines; as of hellebore, bugloss, tamarisk, &c. Syrups of borage, bugloss, hops, epithyme, endive, succory, &c. or consisting. Conserves of violets, maidenhair, borage, bugloss, roses, &c. Confections; treacle, mithridate, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... such lovely things," she said, now, taking up the strip of linen, on which graceful maidenhair fern was growing rapidly. "I don't see where you get ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... Pan's breath, fierce in the tremulous maidenhair, That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air, In the stress of the sun? For here has the great God dwelt: For hence were ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... into which the water fell that we were covered with the spray and almost deafened by the roar. All around the sides of this glen, inside the numerous caves, and among the jutting rocks were most beautiful maidenhair ferns; and on the mossy terraces and banks, violets and lilies grew in luxuriant profusion. The violets were exceedingly large and full of perfume, and we found, on pulling some of them up, that they had immense bulbs; we took some of the ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... breakfast on the deck of the Government yacht, while it steamed down the forty miles between Leichardt's Town and the river bar, beyond which, in those days, large vessels could not pass. There, the repast was laid on tables decorated with white blossoms and maidenhair fern, under an awning festooned with flowers and exotic creepers, and supported apparently, by palm trees and tree ferns which had been ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... olive-gardens cease, and where the short grass of the heights alternates with rocks, and thorns, and aromatic plants. None of his pictures seem complete without the presence of water. It may be but the wells that the maidenhair fringes, or the babbling runnel of the fountain of the Nereids. The shepherds may sing of Crathon, or Sybaris, or Himeras, waters so sweet that they seem to flow with milk and honey. Again, Theocritus may encounter his rustics fluting in rivalry, like Daphnis and Menalcas in the eighth idyl, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... the garden watering her favourite ferns when her husband returned home to dinner on the day of Mr Wodehouse's death. The Rector was late, and she had already changed her dress, and was removing the withered leaves from her prettiest plant of maidenhair, and thinking, with some concern, of the fish, when she heard his step on the gravel; for the cook at the Rectory was rather hasty in her temper, and was apt to be provoking to her mistress next morning when the Rector chose to be late. It was a very hot day, and Mr Morgan was ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... his pleasure almost too openly. They chatted lightly on many subjects as they walked together, knee-deep, at times, among scarlet wine-berries, and the delicate green and ebony of maidenhair fern. The scents and essence of summer hung heavy in the air. Shafts of golden sunlight, piercing the somber canopy of the forest isles, touched, and, it seemed to Geoffrey, etherealized, his companion. The completeness of his enjoyment troubled the man, and presently ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... varieties to grow are the sword, Boston, holly, and maidenhair. Use spider ferns for a ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... had left him, leaning against the latticed wall for some time. When he moved it was to pick up a piece of maidenhair which had dropped from ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He had his arms akimbo, and his feet planted wide apart. His grey bowler rested on the back of his head, to display a sleek coating of hair plastered down over his brow. In his white satin tie shone a dubious but large diamond, and there was the counter-attraction of geraniums and maidenhair fern in his button-hole. So fresh was the nosegay that he must have kept it in water during the passage! Or perhaps these vegetables had absorbed by mere contact with his tweeds, the subtle secret of his own immarcescibility. I remembered now that I had seen him, without realising ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... seeing preciously conserved in hot- houses. In fact, the ditch country of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are unfamiliar, from the tiniest maidenhair to the gross and voracious staghorn, the latter the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with itself in tangled masses five or six ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... Dappled with milk-white clouds that swim In faintest air? The soft moss sleeps upon the stone, Green scrub-vine traceries enthrone The dead gray trunks, and boulders red, Roofed by the pine and carpeted With maidenhair. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... plant, of great beauty. The flowers are not showy, but their great numbers and arrangement render them of importance in what may be termed a fine-foliaged subject. The Isopyrums are very nearly related to the thalictrums or rues, and this one greatly resembles the maidenhair-like section, one of which it is often taken for. There is, however, an important botanical difference between the two genera: the thalictrums have no calyx, and the Isopyrums have. Still, as the flowers of ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... the apartment, and stood dully by the table as she untied the box and lifted half a dozen exquisite white orchids from their bed of maidenhair ferns. Then, trying very hard to keep his voice ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... least, except John, who wandered uneasily about the room, now studying the names of the books on the bookshelves—which he knew by heart, now pulling the curtain aside to look out at the moonlight, now pulling at the fronds of the great maidenhair in his distraction till the table round was scattered with little broken leaves. He wanted to keep out of that atmosphere of emotion which surrounded Elinor at the piano. But it attracted him, all the same, as ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Menzies will say—'Pelargoniums for the hall, Miss Percival, and some nice maidenhair.' ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... country around. A silvery cascade of water fell down the rock at the far side, its fine spray blown by the wind over the little hollow, looking in the sunlight like the veil of a fairy bride. Mollie recognized the delicate fronds of maidenhair growing in clumps here and there, and the edge of the pool at the bottom of the hollow was fringed ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... the forms with which we are acquainted. Thickets of bracken spread over the plains; clumps of Royal ferns and Hartstongues spring up in moister parts. The trees are conifers, cycads, and trees akin to the ginkgo, or Maidenhair Tree, of modern Japan. Cypresses, yews, firs, and araucarias (the Monkey Puzzle group) grow everywhere, though the species are more primitive than those of today. The broad, fan-like leaves and plum-like fruit of the ginkgoales, of which the temple-gardens ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... all the accessories to make a dinner party go off well. The large dining-room was a long, low, octagonal apartment, with a small conservatory opening out at the lower end. There were numerous small alcoves in the wall, and in the recesses of each of these were huge pots of maidenhair fern. ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... of the colleges, suggests that our spring really begins in December, because the "annual cycle of vegetable life" seems to start then. At this time he finds that many of our wild flowers—the bloodroot, hepatica, columbine, shinleaf, maidenhair fern, etc.—have all made quite a start toward the next season's growth, in some cases the new shoot being an inch high. But the real start of the next season's vegetable life in this sense is long ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs |
