Fern resource: Ferns and Lycophytes of the World

If you're looking for information and pictures of ferns, check out Ferns and Lycophytes of the World. This site is a great repository of information about ferns and lycophytes, and serves as a "digital herbarium", connecting collection information with keys, floras, photos, and more. Contributors to the site include a number of fern and lycophyte experts based all over the world, and you can sign up to contribute yourself if you're interested. 

Ferns in and around Archbold Biological Station

My most recent field trip was to go fern-hunting in central Florida. My friend and colleague Eddie Watkins from Colgate University escaped the onset of fall in the north to come visit sunny Florida for a few days. We set out to collect spores of various fern species in order grow and include them in a study we're doing on fern mating systems. We visited Archbold Biological Station, and a Florida state park called Highlands Hammock. Both were beautiful, and with a diverse set of species at each location from which we were able to collect lots of fertile spore material.

Vittaria lineata 

Tree trunk covered in mosses, fern gametophytes, and young fern sporophytes

Ceratopteris thalictroides 

Lygodium microphyllum, one of two invasive Lygodium species in the southeastern U.S.

Lygodium microphyllum

Lygodium microphyllum

Ferns at Archbold

Pine Rocklands project and field work

A few weeks ago I went on the first field trip for a new project I'm involved in with a colleague here at UF, Ben Baiser, looking at phylogenetic relationships of plants in a unique, endangered habitat in South Florida. The pine rocklands is a highly fragmented habitat that is only found on the Miami Rock Ridge, the area in and around Miami and its surrounding metro area. The pine rocklands exist in patchy fragments throughout this area, and in one large patch in the Everglades. Our project is focused on understanding food web dynamics within and between separate pine rockland fragments, and the first step is to identify and DNA barcode all of the plant species.

While we intend to collect all 500+ species found in the pine rocklands, my main interest is of course the ferns. Here are photos of the fern species we've found there so far, with more still to come!

Anemia adiantifolia

Anemia adiantifolia

Anemia adiantifolia

Vittaria lineata 

Pteris bahamensis

Pteris vittata

Psilotum nudum, the first time I've seen it in the wild!

Pleopeltis polypodioides 

A tree-load of epiphytic ferns and bromeliads 

Florida blue and orange! Asclepias and Sisyrinchium.

Ferns in Belgium

Our last stop for fieldwork on our European fern tour was Belgium. We were hosted by Ronnie Viane of the Biology faculty at Ghent University, and he shared with us his fabulous home fern garden and extensive personal herbarium collections before taking us out to do fieldwork in the Ardennes. We hiked through some beautiful forests and fields, and ended up at a roadside wall that had more Asplenium species in one place than we had seen anywhere else on the trip! It was a fantastic end to our field collections.

Beautiful fortress in Ghent

Dryopteris filix-mas happily ensconced in the city center.

Cathedral and medieval caste in La-Roche-en-Ardenne

Asplenium trichomanes ssp. quadrivalens

Snails hanging out and enjoying the calcium-rich rocks

Asplenium fontanum, not seen anywhere else on the trip and our final field collection!

Bonn Botanical Garden

After the Czech Republic, our next stop took us all the way across Germany by train, to Bonn, where we visited the University of Bonn's Botanical Garden. They have a wonderful collection and let us choose plants in the garden to sample from; they actually did all the work once we had identified the plants we wanted, which made our job there easy. We spent some time in the greenhouses, where they had a wonderful collection of Salvinia, one of only five genera of water ferns (Salviniales).

Salvinia has very interesting, complex hair-like structures on the top surfaces of the leaves. Their purpose isn't entirely understood, but they are thought to maintain a layer of air on the top surface of the leaf that may help the leaves remain dry and/or shed water if they get flooded. You can see these hairs in the first photo, of Salvinia molesta.

Salvinia molesta

Salvinia molesta (big) and Salvinia minima (right)

Salvinia cucullata

Salvinia biloba

Salvinia oblongifolia

Some beautiful aquatic non-ferns...

Nymphoides aurantiaca

Ludwigia sedioides

The garden was full of these wonderful animal sculptures. This was near the end of the trip so the alligator/crocodile reminded us of home!

Ferns in the Czech Republic

After our field work in Italy, the next stop on our itinerary was the Czech Republic. We reached Ceske Budejovice in the southwestern Czech Republic after spending most of a day and night on trains, from Sestri Levante to Milan, Venice, Vienna, and then Ceske. We were hosted by Libor Ekrt of the Botany Department at the University of South Bohemia, and he took us on several wonderful trips over almost all of the southern and western parts of the country.

First stop was a beautiful peatland called Borkovická blata.

Dryopteris cristata

Dryopteris carthusiana

We also visited a site outside Mariánské Lázne, a town in the very western part of the country, which had a number of Asplenium species growing on rock outcrops.

Asplenium trichomanes ssp. quadrivalens

Asplenium trichomanes

And in the southeastern part of the country, we visited the Blansko district, and a densely forested site with Aspleniums and Dryopteris filix-mas, among others.

Asplenium scolopendrium

Wall of Asplenium scolopendrium

Dryopteris filix-mas

Asplenium ruta-muraria

Gymnocarpium robertianum

Asplenium trichomanes