Herbert Durand (1859–1944)

Someday I'm going to acutally learn ferns. Probably not from this book, though. It has the same deeply-out-of-date problem as Gray's, especially since I believe fern taxonomy has been completely redone several times. Most of the illustrations are black-and-white line drawings, but it does include fifty pages of black-and-white photo plates of showing their "natural haunts". The photos are so undetailed as to be alomst useless for IDs, but they are actually better than Audobon's, because they show more do show that "natural haunt", which means they provide pretty good context for the sorts of places the plants are likely to grow. show less