Sunday, August 31, 2014

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!



No comments: