Another option for fern-finders

From F G Heath's 'Fern Portfolio' (1885)

 I don't have enough self-discipline when it comes to buying books. I bought the aforementioned 'Arable Bryophytes' and I just found myself pressing the BUY button on a book about ferns. But this (as I like to justify to myself) is ok if I actually read and use them.

A book I bought a while back and admittedly haven't used enough is "The Vegetative Key to the British Flora" by John Poland and Eric Clement (2009). Vegetative implies plants with leaves but without flowers... and let's face it, if you can wait until something flowers, identifying it can be a lot more straightforward.

But today something in my mind twigged the book might contain plants that never flower - like ferns. Its key uses some features of ferns that Merryweather's book does not, like the number of vascular bundles you can see if you chop the stipe in half - they say it's 'often the quickest and most reliable shortcut to the identification of a genus.' I like quick and reliable shortcuts.

What's more, it includes a range of species that aren't native, like the Ostrich fern and the Kangaroo fern, which might conceivably turn up in more domesticated spots and confuse you (those aren't in Merryweather either, I don't think).

Submarginal hydathodes: they're little pores round the edge of the leaf, quite cute. CC image RBGE.

So if you're doing ferns, let me know and I can share the key with you, and we can have a look together if you like (to decrease danger of hyperventilating over some of the technical (though nice to pronounce) terminology like pinnatisect, clathrate scales and submarginal hydathodes).

Incidentally, I really like the illustrations in FG Heath's book (picture above) because they are generally clear and he shows both sides of the blades so the sori can be seen. It would be good if you could display your specimens the same way. He specifically says he wanted to show them life-size, so that's meant some artful curling-round of the stipes (another thing you could do). Admittedly he sometimes crams lots of species on one page (not advised) but that's probably because colour plates were and are expensive. You can splash out on one page per species.

The curious looking Moonwort. CC Jason Hollinger.

The Victorians loved their ferns - after this period it seems people went a bit mad on all the freaky varieties they found, and competitively grew these in their gardens. But I prefer your standard native ferns. Not only do they have that repeating visual thing that I love, but because of the dank mysterious places they usually grow, they often have a bit of a strange reputation. There are ones with great names like Moonwort (Botrychium lunare), Adder's-tongue (Ophioglossum spp.) and Spleenwort (Asplenium spp.)

Moonwort can unshoe horses. Well, apparently. Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th century herbalist, said:

Moonwort is a herb which (they say) will open locks, and unshoe such horses as tread upon it: This some laugh to scorn, and those no small fools neither; but country people, that I know, call it Unshoe the Horse. Besides I have heard commanders say, that on White Down in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horse shoes, pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex's horses, being there drawn up in a body, many of them being but newly shod, and no reason known, which caused much admiration.

To be scientific I think some questioning of the standards of the farrier involved might have been appropriate. What a strange idea though. But kind of Romantic and weird. Perhaps the shapes of the leaves echo the shape of horseshoes (or a key?), and the unfurling frond above does look a bit tentacle-like and grabby.

"Back again?" "Yeah, I stood on some Moonwort." Painting by E R Smythe, 1899.