The fern, watered

The fern I watered the other evening already looks better. I feel rather strange picking one plant out of the entire withering forest to water, but I’m trying to ignore myself about that. My instinct was simply to water the fern because it’s a wild fern I’ve enjoyed seeing for years, and I’m not going to let my intellect question why I’m ignoring the other plants in favor of this one. I favor that fern, so I watered it.

It’s a bit like life, isn’t it?   You can’t fix everything or help everyone, so you have to fix or help the one thing you can do something about.  I can’t water the forest. I can’t make it rain, but I can water that fern. So I did.  Let me try and not make it any more complicated than that.

Is it this drought, I wonder, that has the deer so close and so unwary around the cabin?  The other morning, the big doe stood not more than 25-30 feet away and watched as I fed the chickens.  She didn’t even twitch her tail.  She is a big girl, huge even, clearly the leader of the little group of a spring fawn and two small buck that travel with her. She may well be the largest doe I have ever seen, dwarfing the two four-points that are probably only yearlings. I hope she survives the upcoming deer season.  She is wise compared to the younger deer around her and knows what food can be found and where during this dry period. The other deer all take their cues from her. She calmly feeds nearby, so they are willing to feed just outside the door of the cabin as well, if not so calmly. I'd love to know how old she is. How many years does it take for a deer to become the wise one in her group?  Two?  Four?  Do many of them live any longer than that?  She seems healthy and vital, not an old one that might not survive the upcoming winter.  I will never know the answers, of course. So I just watch her and try to learn a few of her secrets.

Precarious

****Stay alert for the possibility of northern lights tonight. The sun is unsettled right now and the aurora is possible in the mid-latitudes.****

Of course, here on Roundtop, thunderstorms are marching across Pennsylvania, so it’s unlike my sky will be clear enough to look. That tends to be the rule rather than exception on the few nights of the year when the aurora borealis is likely this far south.

Around the cabin new growth, new blooms appear every day. Last night I saw the first poison ivy along the edge of my lane and the driveway. I keep hoping, to no avail obviously, that the forest canopy will soon make it too shady for these plants. But, of course, the cut for the driveway and the lane lets in the sunlight and so up jumps the poison ivy.

The fern in today’s photo has grown in the crack of this boulder for years now. It is starting to feel like an old friend, and I look for it whenever I pass. It is not on my land, and indeed is right along the edge of the lane. Even a minimal widening of the road would displace it. Its long-tern survival is thus rather precarious, but every time it lives to see another spring feels like a small victory. The fern never gets bigger and is always in the same part of the boulder’s crack. It is a survivor against all odds. It’s one of those things I try to enjoy when I see it and try not to look too far ahead into its future. Some days that’s easier than others.

For some reason, the ferns that grow profusely just 150 yards away are near-strangers to my part of the mountain. Where I am is drier, I suspect, and the soil probably less rich. Still, the divide between the ferny part of the mountain and the non-ferny part is nearly complete, so I welcome this little one to my part of the mountain. I only wish there were more around the cabin, though I will be the first to tell you that it isn’t much of a walk to enjoy several varieties of ferns in large numbers.

More explosions

 After a warm and sunny week, the weekend at Roundtop was a washout—until around 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon when the sun finally appeared. At that point, it was too late to do much exploring in the woods, and everything was still wet and dripping anyway. I did, however, retire to the back deck and spend an hour or so enjoying the feel of the sun on my neck.



I also saw the northbound migration of several black vultures, with a few turkey vultures that did not appear to be local adding to the mix. A red-tailed hawk that may or may not have been a local bird circled in a northbound direction, too. But the real drama came from the local pileated and red-bellied woodpeckers who were involved in a screeching match over something. 



The pileated woodpeckers circled around the cabin, causing an awful racket. They would disappear, still screeching, to the north only to circle around from the south and swoop through the forest again, still raucous. The red-bellied woodpecker mostly ignored the pileated woodpeckers, holding its ground on a dead limb. When the pileated swooped by, the red-bellied would toss off some woodpeckery and possibly vulgar retort, and the whole drama would begin again. Who ever said the woods are quiet?



More flowers popped up in the woods, with coltsfoot, which is normally the earliest of the blooms, finally making an appearance. My favorite local fern, still growing out of a crack in a boulder along the edge of the lane to the cabin, has begun to unfurl its fronds. The rue anemone (or is it a spring beauty?) is blooming as well. When the leaves are no more unfurled than these are, I can’t tell the two apart, even when I have an identification guide in my hands.



The trees are beginning to leaf out, even up on Roundtop Mtn. Down in the valley and off the mountain, there’s no “beginning” about the leafing. They are out and are a good 6 weeks earlier than they should be, to boot. 

A fern in frost

Christmas fern (frosted)

In my winter landscape, not much has a color other than some shade of brown. So when I’m out in the woods, anything that is non-brown is quick to catch my eye. One thing I always know to look for is the Christmas fern.

Christmas ferns stay green all winter, though they flatten out and don’t stand up the way they do during the growing season. Because they stay green, they were favored as household Christmas decorations at least as late as the 19th Century, particularly in those pre-electricity, pre-Christmas lights days that seem unimaginable today.

And really, those days were not that long ago. Even my father claims (though my mother always denied) that he did his schoolwork by a kerosene lantern because rural electrification did not arrive until he was in high school. Going into the forest to cut the fronds of the fern that soon came to be called a Christmas fern was a family tradition, as much as going to a farm to get a tree is today.

I’ve always tried to picture, and usually my imagination fails me, those Victorian ladies in their corsets and long skirts out in a forest delicately snipping Christmas ferns with their sewing scissors to decorate their living rooms and hallways. I just can’t make that whole picture work. But so they did, or so I’m told.

Today’s Christmas fern captured my eye because of the frost on the fronds, but I would have been just as glad to see it for its greenery alone on this grey day in an otherwise brown landscape.

Freedom to sit

Rattlesnake Fern

Even though I live in the forest, surrounded by its beauty, many times I feel I don’t have much time to spend there. My life is as busy as everyone’s is, with work and chores and errands. There’s always something that needs done, something that shouldn’t be put off another day, something. Time to ignore those demands and the constraints of daily life doesn’t come often. My time to just sit and enjoy the woods feels almost nonexistent. Occasionally, I just ignore the never-ending demands and go anyways, but I don’t do that as often as I should.

Adventure camp this year is letting me sit in the woods all day long, one day a week for eight weeks. And they are paying me to do it. How utterly incredible is that?

Of course, I have 8 groups of kids coming to my sitting spot during that day, and ideally I spend about 20 minutes with each group. But that still leaves me long stretches of time to just sit and enjoy the woods, to listen to the birds, watch the sky or see if I can still catch a crayfish or a frog. Yesterday was heaven. Even the weather cooperated, a joy I don’t expect to be repeated every week or maybe not even again. I will deal with that as it comes.

For now, I am content to be away from the work, chores and errands, to enjoy the freedom to putter around all day in the woods with no task in mind, or to sit in my camp chair and listen to the birds, watch the day’s sun shadows traverse the woods and just sit.

Unfurling

Christmas fern

The brilliant colors of the spring wildflower have already disappeared, leaving the mountain covered with green plants and green leaves. A few flowers remain but I seem to be in the quiet place that comes after spring wildflowers and before the summer ones emerge.

For me, this is a good time to look for ferns, which are abundant in the wetter spots of the mountain. Right by my cabin is not a wet spot, so I have to walk half a mile or so to reach the first good fern patch.

Today’s fern is the most common one on the mountain. It’s a Christmas fern, so named because the fronds stay green in winter, making them popular for Christmas decorations, especially in the pre-electric light years. I was attracted to the color of the unfurling frond, which is also the color of the fern spores that will appear on the underside of the fronds later in the year. In fact, my first thought when I saw this fern is that was what it was, before I realized it was the wrong time of year and then looked more closely.

It will soon be time for another year of adventure camp for kids on the mountain, and I look forward to working with kids in the outdoors each year. I try to get them interested in things like ferns, though I think it’s a losing battle. Ferns must be an acquired taste, and small green plants aren’t exciting enough for them. For me, their delicacy and gently curving shapes are a delight I never tire of. Maybe this will be the year I win over a couple of the kids.

A Sunday afternoon ramble

The fall colors here on Roundtop Mtn. are still a work in progress, but fall weather the past few days is perfection itself. Knowing that this can’t last, I left my housework behind and headed down the mountain, to ramble along the stream that runs between Rountop and Nell’s Hill. I told myself that I needed the exercise, but since I found myself stopping to take a photo about every 3-4 feet, it’s questionable how much exercise was actually accomplished.

Originally, I simply wanted to take a photo of the mountain behind the cabin, but while I was up there, looking down to the base of Roundtop, it didn’t look very far away, so I headed down. Once there, I was just going to visit the pond that I can almost see from the top of the hill, but then I wanted to see how some of the ferns looked at this point in the fall, and before you know it, I was deep in the forest, enjoying the weather and sunlight and the quiet.

I followed the old woods road for much of my ramble. It makes for much easier walking than bushwhacking around the rocks and fallen trees that litter the forest floor. The old road cut created a bank on one side that is covered in ferns, mosses and forest plants of all kinds. I always see something different down here, and this ramble proved no exception.

The second photo today is of a withering ostrich fern, so named because the plumes resemble the ostrich feathers that used to adorn lady’s hats. The spores of next year’s growth are already visible on the underside. Before long, probably after the first frost of this season, the fronds will settle to the ground, where the spores will find a moist and fertile medium to begin their growth cycle next spring.

Along the old road, I see a flock of juncos. Saturday, for just a second, I saw the first to arrive at my feeders, but it was gone almost before I saw it. Today, the juncos are flighty, as though they aren’t yet sure if this is the spot where they will winter. I watch them flutter and stop, moving through the forest, then I move on, too.

Big and splashy? It's in the eye of the beholder

The ferns that make their home on Roundtop mountain appear to love this wet day/dry day weather going on here this month (or is it two months, now?). They are both numerous and lush, covering every bank or wet spot I can find.

Tomorrow will be my first day with this year’s crop of kids who attend Adventure Camp. I will take them on a hike into the woods and try to get them interested in the things we find along our way. Kids do better with things that are big and splashy rather than small and subtle. They will do okay with small, if it’s something they can touch. A fox crossing the trail counts as big and splashy. A bug they can hold in their hands is okay. A Baltimore oriole streaking through the forest doesn’t count. It might count if it landed on a low branch in open view and began to sing, but I’m not entirely sure about that.

They like eating the wild black raspberries that line the trail we will follow—but they aren’t ripe yet. Last year they liked the “green smoke” that erupted from a puffball when I tapped it with my hiking staff—but they aren’t up yet. Hopefully, we will find enough frogs and toads and other things to please them.

Ferns certainly aren’t high on their list, which is unfortunate because we will find so many of them along our trail. I will try and pique their interest to see the differences between the species of them. I will try and explain how observing small differences is how you learn to really look at what’s around you, how those small differences mean a lot. It can be a tough sell.

For me, everything in a forest is interesting—every tiny spore that pokes its head above the moss, every tiny plant, the quantity of nuts on a hickory tree this year. For the kids, almost nothing is as interesting as the video game at home. Exploring the outdoors on their own isn’t an idea that ever seems to cross their minds. Or perhaps it’s simply that they have no unscheduled time to themselves to even thing about things like that.

We speak a different language, these kids and I, though I work to bridge that wide divide between us. One day, they will inherit this world from us, and I hope they will come to understand and love its infinite pleasures and mysteries.

A walk in the greeny woods

Last evening produced another brief respite from the rainy weather that is May and June this year. A nice breeze earlier in the afternoon helped to dry things off enough that I could venture into the woods without coming back to the cabin soaked to the skin.

As you can see from today’s photos, the forest is as lush and as dense as a jungle right now. Bushwhacking would require a machete, so I stayed on the trails. Even those were more overgrown than is typical and likely the reason I came home with three ticks.

I stayed out of the deepest valley between the mountains, as I knew that would be deep with mud. The trail I followed skims along the side of Roundtop mountain about halfway down it. I start out going steeply downhill and am glad I brought a hiking stick. I have to pay attention to where I place my feet and still skid here and there, using the pole to prevent a fall.

The trail I wanted heads north and once I reach it, the going is flatter and grassy. The reason I like this trail is because the upslope side of it is covered with moss and ferns. Most are Christmas ferns and lady ferns, but I find one patch of 5-6 maidenhair ferns, the most I’ve ever found in one spot and the first time I’ve located them on this trail. Last year I found one single plant nestled along the edge of a larger, two-track dirt road that somehow survived the summer to appear again this spring. I walked this path many times last year without ever finding a maidenhair fern, so to come across so many on this foray was a thrill.

Bird song followed me as I walked—indigo bunting, wood thrush, ovenbirds, Baltimore orioles, mostly. I startled a red fox not far from the edge of the path. The fox skittered away uphill but didn’t go far, crouching to hide not more than 25 feet from where first I saw it. I suspect a den was nearby but I didn’t stop to look for it or further disturb the fox.

Like most good walks in the forest, this one was fairly uneventful. The evening was sunny, the path was straight. What more could anyone want?

A familiar friend

A few evenings ago Dog and I wandered on a wooded trail down the mountain. The trail we followed stays wet longer after a rain than elsewhere, and I wanted to see if it was dry enough for a walk. This trail is one of the ones I use when I take kids from Roundtop’s Adventure Camp to explore the woods. Because the path had been so wet, I hadn’t been on this trail since the spring growth was well up, and now I wanted to see the changes.

Dog needed a decent walk, too, though taking both Dog and a camera is not always smart. Whenever I stop to photograph something, Dog tries to shove his way in front of me, sure that I’m looking at something to eat. Keeping him from stepping on the something I want to look at usually means I can’t use the camera with him around.

The path down the mountain is hilly but not rocky, with dense undergrowth and a lot of ferns. Last year, for the first time ever, I found a maidenhair fern right off the edge of the trail. I wanted to see if that particular fern was growing again this year, and the two of us headed down the hill to look for it. I wasn’t sure I’d remember exactly where to look, as finding something that’s less than a foot across and the same color as everything else in the woods isn’t always easy, especially without any major landmarks near.

As you can tell from today’s photo, the little maidenhair fern is still there this year. I found it easily and was happy that I remembered exactly where to look. I first photographed the fern in August of last year, though I’d found it in July. When I saw the fern this year, my initial impression was that it wasn’t any larger than before, but when I went back and looked at the original photo, I think it is larger. I couldn’t find a second fern of it, though, so it’s still an “only.”

The other ferns are starting to grow along this section as well, though many are still unfurling. The area boasts several species of ferns—long beech, Christmas, sensitive, oak, lady among them.

Ferns are notoriously difficult to identify because there are so many of them and because the differences between the species are often only discernable by looking at the spores. I do the best I can with a few field guides. I thoroughly enjoy finding a different one on my walks, and if I can’t identify it closer than its family, well, that’s just the way it is. So when I find one that I can identify, like the northern maidenhair fern, as well as one that doesn’t have 1000 more plants just like it in the woods, it really makes my day.

November walk with Dog

After a cool summer and a cool October, November at Roundtop is shaping up as unusually mild. On Sunday the weather was especially pleasant—blue sky, calm winds and sun. Dog and I both needed an outing, so we took advantage of the day and headed down into the woods and along Beaver Creek.

The distance we covered wasn’t very much. I enjoyed ambling along and looking at anything and everything that caught my eye. I stopped every few feet to look at something or take a photo. The area where we walked is where I take the kids from Adventure Camp in summer. For them, I have to find things that are big and exciting and keep the pace moving. Now that I didn’t have the kids along, I could enjoy the day on my own terms.

I haven’t been down here since the leaves dropped, so the difference is, as always, a bit startling to me. Perhaps I simply startle easily. With rifle deer season just two weeks away, it’s hard to say when I will get down again. I’d like to think my Sundays will be calm enough that I can come down every week, but I know better than to make predictions.

After a summer encased in greenery, green is now much harder to find. Christmas ferns are still green. The other 4-5 fern species that I found here this summer have disappeared into the forest floor. I can’t even find their remnants. The other green I found was moss, which is growing very nicely and looking very healthy. That was pretty much it.

Dog found a deer—a large doe—and innumerable squirrels to keep his attention. I also saw Canada geese down on the pond. Blue jays scolded as we invaded their woods. Chickadees joined in, as did the white-breasted nuthatch. Other than that, the woods were quiet. Of course, where I live, it is most often quiet, and so doesn’t seem unusual to me. In fact, I have grown to expect quiet, though other people always remark on the quietness when we are down here.

If the November weather could have been any better for a walk in the woods, I don’t know what I would have done to make it better. Quiet, blue sky, comfortable temperatures and calm wind add up to perfect. The only thing that would be better if if I could walk down here every day.

A walk in the ferny woods

Perhaps it’s the weather, but I’ve been in a "fern-y" phase this summer. I’ve always enjoyed ferns, but this year I have grown more interested in them. I’m surprised by the poor quality of the fern identification guides I’ve encountered, though all are obviously written by people who know much more about ferns than I do. One guide has great information but poor illustrations, which makes IDing the little emerald gems difficult. Another writes endlessly about fern spores and has only drawings of ferns, which is no help at all.

I have this niggling idea that a really good fern guide should be written for everyday enthusiasts like me and not just for the fern geeks of academia. Good photos, good range maps, interesting information—is that really too much to ask? But as usual, I digress.

What I wanted to show you this morning is one stretch of the woods on Roundtop where I’ve been finding some of the ferns. This photo was taken in an area slightly more open than average. You can see how lush and green the forest is right now. The lushness is not typical for mid-August. To my eye, this photo looks more like one I’d expect to learn was taken in mid-June.

The little two-track road leads down to the bottom of the mountain, though I took this shot about midway down, still some distance from the valley floor with its rocky stream and moist loam. Here, the forest is typically more sandy or at least better drained than down below, though I'm not sure you'd guess that from this appearance. Usually, this section of forest looks much drier in mid-August than it does today.

This summer has been especially rainy and cooler than average, which has likely made the ferns pretty happy and probably also accounts for their current abundance. It hasn’t hurt my feelings, either.

A new discovery

Sometimes a little investigation into the natural world leads to unsuspected and interesting discoveries. Today’s photo is of a long beech fern. This fern is apparently common in Canada and the northern U.S. In the east it’s found down to West Virginia and Maryland, apparently skips over Virginia and Kentucky and then magically reappears in Tennessee and North Carolina. I found this pretty little fern on Sunday when I was down in the woods.

Despite owning several fern identification guides, putting a name to this fern proved more difficult than I expected. To me, the fronds are pretty distinctive and somewhat untypical of the general run of ferns. The fronds are broader than most of the ferns I see, the overall color a paler green, and when I looked closely, I noticed that the last pair of fronds closest to the base were always pointing down at a diagonal. So on the surface it looked as though the ID should be easy.

Partly, my difficulty came from the fern guides themselves. One has photographs but the photos aren’t always great and are even a bit blurry in the close-ups. Another has drawings, and frankly, they all look alike to me. In any event, I eventually figured it out and that’s when the discovery happened.

Yesterday, I posted the photo of the pretty little maidenhair fern that I also found on my walk in the woods. The beech-fern is within a few feet of that fern, and one of the field guides said the beech-fern is often associated with maidenhair ferns. Suddenly, the whole fern picture got a little clearer. First off, that little note helped to confirm the beech-fern identification, and in some ways it also helped clear up the maidenhair fern story. On the surface, the spot where I found the maidenhair seemed an uncharacteristic location for it. But now, learning that it is often found with the beech-fern, which I found in the same spot, the location for the maidenhair must be less uncharacteristic than I first assumed.

All in all, finding these two ferns together forms a tidy little package, all tied up with a bow.

Surprise in the woods

Regular readers of Roundtop Ruminations know that I’ve spent my most of my Thursdays since the start of the summer taking groups of kids from an adventure camp into the woods to show them interesting things in the forest. It wasn’t just the kids that found interesting things, I found some things I didn’t know were here either.

Today’s photo is one of them. It’s a northern maidenhair fern, also called five-finger fern, the first I’ve ever seen in these woods in nearly 20 years of living here. I dutifully showed it to each group of kids and told them it was the first one I’d ever found here. They were not completely impressed. To these suburban kids, finding, picking and eating one tiny black raspberry was far, far more exciting than some ratty old fern.

Of course, at the beginning of the summer, this "ratty old fern" didn’t look quite as ratty as it does today. While I was hiking with the kids, I didn’t take my camera, so it was only this past weekend, now that camp is over, that I got to make a trip into the woods on my own, with camera. Part of the reason I was so surprised to find the fern here on my first trip into the woods with the kids is that where I found the fern on Roundtop is pretty far from the fern’s optimal habitat.

Maidenhair ferns favor rocky ravines, preferably ones with at least a seasonal stream running down the ravine. Moss-covered banks, stream, splashing water, rocks, that kind of thing. This particular fern is mere inches from the edge of a woods road, still well up on the mountain, with no ravine or stream in sight. I feel a little sorry for the plant. The only true part of this plant’s favored habitat that matches where it sits on Roundtop is that the plant likes limestone and limestone soil and rich deciduous woods. We’ve got that part here.

The plant has been reported in every county of Pennsylvania, so it’s not uncommon in and of itself. I have looked for it when I fern-gaze down along the banks of Beaver Creek that flows between Roundtop and Nell’s Hill. That area is fern heaven and far more closely fits the maidenhair’s preferred habitat. Funny, that I’ve never found one down there, but here one is up on the side of the mountain.

Between this plant’s chosen site and the marginal habitat on which it sits, I’m more than a little surprised it has survived the summer so far. I was actually tempted to take some water along on Sunday and see that it got a nice watering, but a little rain on Saturday night doused the forest enough that I didn’t.

For me, finding a maidenhair fern here on Roundtop was a big thrill, if not for the kids. It really beats those ratty old black raspberries by far.

Just a "little" rain

Last night I had 4 inches of rain.

This morning I have water in the basement and a collapsed chicken tarp. But it could be worse.

The water in the basement amounted to about an inch. I pumped it down to about .25 inch or thereabouts. The pump can’t work with less than that.

The chicken coop is still covered by the chicken wire, if no longer quite as secure as previously. The tarp is still held up on two ends. The chickens were unperterbed by the events of overnight. I’d cut a slit in the tarp to drain rain water and so it wouldn’t puddle, but I guess I need more slits for four inches of rain.

The good news? I can forget about that 4 inch rain deficit.

I slept through most of the event and certainly didn’t realize how much it was raining until I got up this morning. That’s when I saw the lane and my driveway, which now will require a four-wheel drive vehicle to get in and out or up and down the mountain. Fortunately, I have one of those.

Well, at least it’s Friday. Presumably, the chickens will remain okay until I can get another tarp tomorrow. The forecast is for scattered showers today. I hope the scattering isn’t over my cabin. Saturday is supposed to bring clearing skies, and I’m ready for those.

This morning as I was leaving the cabin I found this fern, still rain drops still in place. It’s a sensitive or bead fern (onoclea sensibilis in case there’s a different common name for it in your area). The woods look lovely this morning, raindrops on everything. The greenery is so thick that a jungle pales in comparison. Funny, I never thought I’d ever get to live in a rain forest.

Little greenery around the cabin

All the new greenery around the cabin right now is tiny stuff. This fern, which has grown out of the rock for years now, is the largest of the lot. The fern is a common polypody, which can make a living and can grow where virtually nothing else can.

The second photo is some of the greenery from trout lilies (or yellow dog-toothed violet) that grows just outside the cabin door. I have to be careful not to step on it when I'm loading or unloading the car. Although there's always a lot of leaves, I don't usually get many flowers from the plants. I will likely see 2-3-4 violets, never all at once. With this many leaves, though, you'd likely guess there should be 20 flowers at once. Don't I wish. Maybe some year.

The last photo, which includes the rusty iron stake that holds my wind chimes, is of wild purple violets. I always have a group of them at this spot, which I really have to be careful not to step on as they are within 3 inches of the last step out of the cabin door. They always grow in this spot too. I have other wild violets here and there around the property, but I've always wondered if the original plants that grow in this spot were transplanted here or not. It just seems amazing to me that I'd have wild violets right at the foot of the steps appearing here of their own accord. Regardless, they have been here ever since I've lived in the cabin.Every evening when I get home, I wander through the driveway, checking to see what's sprung up since the morning. I see a little more progress every day. Seedlings that were unidentifiable in the morning are now taller and are somewhat more identifiable. Every evening I come home and see more tiny spots of greenery that weren't there 12 hours before.

I look forward to this twice daily ritual. For me, one of the amazing things about spring is how quickly things change. Partly, it's because winter seems unchanging through much of it. But equally important is an erroneous perception that I used to have. My perception was that plants grow so slowly it takes days to see change and even then you had to really pay attention to see the difference. That's not true. At all. When I pay attention, I can see the change between morning and evening. I still find that amazing.

Ferns in sunshine

Even the ferns are turning color in the woods right now. I came across many of these colonizing a steep bank on my Sunday walk. These are the Lady fern, one of the most common in northern temperate climes like mine.

This fern was much prized by the Victorians during the Victorian fern craze. This species is probably the most common fern species I see around Roundtop. I’ve read that I could divide a plant in the spring and replant it up at the cabin, but I have an aversion to taking anything I find in the forest. That doesn’t keep me from being tempted, at least occasionally, though.

Of all the plant families, I think ferns are my favorite, though fungi are close. Often, identifying ferns isn’t a particularly easy exercise. There are many species and many of those are similar to each other. Reading about how one species is separated from another very similar species usually gets very technical very quickly, and sometimes I just zone out or give up. Sometimes, even when the descriptions use words I understand, they use those words in unusual ways, and I end up even more confused.

I love knowing what species of all plants are found around Roundtop, but I’m not about to make myself crazy over it when I can’t. Not knowing doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of their beauty. Nothing could do that.

Leaf and fern

Before anyone asks, I did not place this leaf atop the fern. It was like this when I found it.

In fact, when I first saw this leaf, I was too far away to realize what it was. I simply saw this bright red "something" as I walked along the path between the mountains on Sunday. From a distance, it looked a bit like a flower, and I wondered what could possibly be blooming that was so large and so bright. And then I saw the fern and wondered if the "flower" had poked up between the fronds of the fern, perhaps protected by it, and then I finally saw it wasn’t a flower at all but a bright red leaf sitting on the fern.

Perfect, isn’t it?

As lightly as the leaf rests on the fern, I suspect it hadn’t been there for very long, nor, I suspect, did it remain there for long, as I think the slightest breeze would move it. And so my finding it sitting there was about as lucky as winning the lottery would be.

The leaf is a red maple. It’s one of the most abundant hardwoods, and one that can thrive under a variety of soil types. You can identify this leaf by its 3 or 5 lobes. This one almost qualifies for 5, if you count the little points just off the side to the top. The opposite lobes are paired, which means the leaf is the same on its right side as on its left, and it has those little teeth along the leaf’s margin. You can make maple syrup from this variety, but it doesn’t have the higher sugar content of the other commercial varieties.

The fern is a Christmas fern, so named as it is still green around Christmas time and was used, especially in Victorian times, as a Christmas decoration. It’s very common in the wet woods on the steeper slopes down in the valley. And since the plant likes steeper slopes, the ferns can be used for soil conservation, because after the first frost, they will flatten to the ground, holding fallen leaves on the slope so they can rot and become new soil.

But all that pales next to the simple beauty of a red leaf sitting in sunlight atop a green fern on an October afternoon.

Go With the Green

For at least a day or two, I am giving up looking for things in the forest that are not-green. I’ve decided for the moment to go with the greenery around me, so today’s photo reflects that. This fern is a Christmas fern, one of the most common ferns around the woods of Roundtop and throughout the east coast. Christmas ferns are so named because they stay green all winter and were once commonly used in Christmas decorations.

References I have found suggest that the fern was likely named in the Victorian era, when ferns were especially popular. For a while, apparently, the ferns were so popular as Christmas decorations that they became difficult to find in the wild. Fortunately, that craze has passed, and this fern is common again. It is reported to be often seen with wood ferns of the genus dryopteris, which I can confirm to be true, at least here on Roundtop.

My Next Door Fern

See how this fern is draped along the crack of this boulder? That’s one of the ways to identify it. The fern is a common polypody, and they make a living out of inserting themselves into places where other plants aren’t interested in growing. Their name means "many footed." Other names for them are rock polypody, rock cap fern, Virginia polypode and in Quebec tripes-de-roches. A newly described polypody that’s very similar to the common polypode is now called Appalachian polypode. This does not seem to be that species, which is described as having the middle of the frond slightly wider than the base.

This fern is also evergreen, a fact to which I can attest, as I see this particular fern every day and have for at least a few years. In winter, it’s one of the few spots of green in my otherwise brown (or white) landscape so I always make a point of looking for it. I have tried to photograph it many times, and so far I haven’t been satisfied with a single photo, including this one. It’s a small fern, and when I’m far enough away so you can see the interesting rock around it, the fern doesn’t show up very well. When I’m close enough to get a decent photo of the fern, the rock isn’t visible.