Bracken (Pteris aquilina) or common brake or fern is a common British and almost world-wide fern found growing on heathland. Its stem is a wide- spreading underground structure, covered with fine brown hairs and giving off roots in all directions; this stem sends up each year a single leaf or frond which may vary in height from 15 centimetres to four metres according to the growing conditions. The spore cases occur in lines along the margin of the pinnae, thus distinguishing the bracken from other British ferns. Formerly the stem was eaten and the fronds used for thatching and beddingcattle. Research Bracken
The Ferns (Filices) are a natural order of cryptogamous or flowerless plants, forming the highest group of the acrogena or summit-growers. They are leafy plants, the leaves, or more properly fronds, arising from a rhizome or root-stock, or from a hollow arborescent trunk, and being circinate in vernation, a term descriptive of the manner in which the fronds are rolled up before they are developed in spring, having then the appearance of a bishop's crosier. On the veins of their lower surface, or their margins, the fronds bear small vessels named sporangia, containing spores. These spore-cases are arrangod in clusters, named sori, which are either naked or covered with a layer of the epidermis, which forms an involucre or indusium. When the spores germinate they produce a cellular structure of a leafy description, called the pro-embryo, or prothallus, upon which are developed organs which have received the names of antheridia and archegonia. When produced upon the prothallus these organs do not immediately give origin to a germinating spore, but from their mutual action proceeds a distinct cellular body, destined at a later period to develop into a fruit-bearing frond.
Ferns have a wide geographical range, but are most abundant in humid, temperate, and tropical regions. In the tropical forests the tree-ferns rival the palms, rising sometimes to a height of 15 or 18 metres. Ferns are very abundant as fossil plants. The earliest-known forms occur in Devonian rocks. Various systems of classification for ferns have been proposed over time. The order is usually divided into six or eight suborders or tribes distinguished by differences in the structure of the sporangium. The generic characters are founded on the position and direction of the sori and on the venation. The largest division is that of the Polypodiaceae, to which nearly all British ferns belong, such as the polypody, the lady-fern, the bracken, the hard-fern, the spleenwort, the maiden-hair, the hart's-tonguefern, etc. The royal fern, however, belongs to the Osmundaceae. A few of the ferns are used medicinally, mostly as demulcents and astringents. Some yield food. Pteris esculenta is the edible bracken of New Zealand. Research Ferns
The lesser white-toothed shrew (Crocidura suaveolens) is a south European shrew recognisable by its white teeth and the second uni-cuspid tooth markedly smaller than the third in crown view. The teeth appear more variable in size than those of other white-toothed shrews. It is similar to the greater white- toothed shrew but smaller and with a more yellowish coloured underside. The lesser white-toothed shrew lives in dry bracken, tall vegetation and other habitats offering good cover and litterzone. It builds a nest of soft vegetation in sheltered places on heathland and feeds on insects and other invertebrates especially sand hoppers. It is a generally solitary animal, but not as aggressive as Sorex genus shrews. The breeding season is from spring to autumn and the animal may breed in its first year, reaching Sexual maturity at 45 to 50 days old. The gestation period is 28 days and produces a litter of between one and six young and there may be up to four litters in a year. Research Lesser White-Toothed Shrew
Miracle Of Morgan's Creek is a comedy starring Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton. It is the story of a girl who cannot resist a man in uniform, and who wakes up one morning to find she is married to a soldier whose name she can't remember.
Miracle Of Morgan's Creek was directed by Preston Sturges. Research Miracle Of Morgan's Creek
Abbreviations
Research Bracken
