Friday, May 20, 2011

Fern Fables: Sword and Maidenhair

Our storybook sword-ferns are waking up in woodland-gardens on the north shore (here, bordering the steps to Daphne's grotto garden). Whoever still thinks that ferns are unassuming creatures trembling in dark corners has never looked a sword fern in the fiddlehead(s).






Sword ferns/Polystichum munitum can perch on precipices, border bedrock...






... or sink into the mellow dappled light of an understorey--and clearly draw a circle of personal space with their arching fronds.

Mine. All mine.


Maidenhair ferns/Adiantum pedatum are not as stalwart, but they are obviously happy in the pics below--basking in evening light, but shaded during the day, with an overstorey of rhododendrons and mature evergreens. These may be, in fact, the happiest maidenhairs I've ever seen (in Jim & Rojeanne's garden).

An illumination of unfurling fern fronds...



...









Something storybook about ferns...

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