Fern Inventory

Lynn Reid and Allison Menendez joined me today for some garden work. I started out by pulling out my Peterson Field Guide to the Ferns to figure out what a few of the mystery ferns were. Fern identification is based on whether the leaves are "once cut, twice cut, or thrice cut" and what the spores or sori look like. I had the toughest time figuring out if our thrice cut fern was a Lady Fern or Spinulose Wood Fern and finally just took some close-up shots of the soris to figure out at home. Alas, we appear to have both. The photo on top appears to be a Lady Fern, while the one below is a Spinulose Wood Fern.

The Spinulose sori are round and at the end of the veins, while the Lady Fern sori look like eyebrows.

The picture above is of the marginal woodfern, which is twice cut and the sori are dotted along the margins of the leaves (hence the name "marginal"). At Eklund these are the fern growing beautifully out of the stone walls.

The small fern above is a polypody growing over some rocks at the top of the Eklund upper terrace, which is what polypodys do.

We're very lucky to have so many fern species at Eklund. Here's an inventory of our ferns:

Christmas Fern (evergreen)
Polypody (up high in the wall on a rock)
Maidenhair Fern (purchased, in lower bed)
Royal Fern (purchased,- in the goldfish pond)
Interrupted Fern (large patch down by the trail, also in lower bed)
Ostrich Fern (purchased, in goldfish pond and lower bed)
Spinulose Wood Fern (in woodland fern patch near sidewalk)
Lady Fern (was growing where the cabin once stood, transplated to lower bed)
Marginal Wood Fern (growing in the walls)
Hayscented Fern (spread atop the upper terrace and through much of the site, along the pond)