Monday, October 10, 2011

Dryopteris clintoniana

The final species I needed to measure on this trip was Dryopteris clintoniana; after D. ludoviciana it probably has the next-most-limited range of the North American Dryopteris, but happily it grows just a few miles from my beloved Ithaca, NY, so I never mind going out to visit this one. I've followed this population for several years and it's nice to find that it continues to remain stable at the edge of its little swamp. I did notice as I was measuring this year though, that there were a number of plants with, for lack of a better word, weird fronds.

Here's a plant displaying the horizontal, venetian blind-looking pinnae which this allohexaploid inherited from its maternal progenitor, the tetraploid D. cristata:

And a couple of odd looking individuals:

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