Add to a woodland walk, a different view of ferns.

My wife and I spent a few days in Vermont recently and one day we stopped by a state park for a walk in the woods. A broad trail through the woods(a former railroad bed for a narrow gauge railroad) afforded an easy walk and a excellent view of adjacent woodland scenery. During a stop at the park ranger's station I happened across a short booklet about ferns.

http://www.vtstateparks.com/pdfs/ferns.pdf

It showed what we might expect during our walk. As I thumbed through the pages of the booklet, showing the many ferns that populated the underbrush, part of the tutorial stood out. It explained that ferns can be generally categorized into three groups. Cut once, twice or three times, a forth category contains non-fern like plants. For the sake of a simple walk in the woods we will only use the first three groups. While you may not know immediately, the ID of a fern in question, this information allows you to place the plant in one of three groups, eliminating about 2/3 of the other ferns. You now have enough information to add another dimension to an otherwise 'very green woodland' walk.

I walked around our yard and found examples of all three common categories.

Note the convolutions in each frond:

Cut once:

( photo / image / picture from Jerry Sullivan's Garden )

Cut twice:


( photo / image / picture from Jerry Sullivan's Garden )

Cut three times:


( photo / image / picture from Jerry Sullivan's Garden )


All three next to each other:


( photo / image / picture from Jerry Sullivan's Garden )


Something different for your next woodland walk,

Jerry

 

Thanks Jerry. That was very interesting and educational. I had never noticed there was a difference. I do know that if you see little spores on the backs of the leaves that they are reproducing, but now I have something new to look for!

 

Even I can remember that. Thanks Jerry for a good lesson on ferns.