Ferns in the Netherlands

I just returned from a month-long fern collecting trip through most of central Europe; it was fantastic and I brought back ~500 samples, both newly collected from the field and material sampled from herbarium specimens. All of these samples, which are from various Dryopteris and Asplenium species, will have DNA extracted, and then be included in sequencing projects to determine phylogenetic relationships in the two genera, the focus of a big project in my lab. I'll post pictures from the whole trip over the next few weeks. The itinerary included stops in the Netherlands, Paris, Turin and Sestri Levante in Italy, Ceske Budejovice in the southwestern Czech Republic, Bonn, Ghent, and Madrid.

We started the trip by spending a week in the Netherlands, based in Leiden. We visited the exceptional herbarium collections at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, which houses collections from universities all over the Netherlands. Looking out over the collections from the second floor was like being in the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark:

In addition to sampling from material at the herbarium, we went on several field trips to collect fresh material from the field. Our host, Peter Hovenkamp, brought us to several beautiful sites in the northern part of the country, and we found a number of Dryopteris species, several of which are endemic to Europe and that I had never seen before.

Our collecting team: Arjen de Groot, my husband/field assistant, me, Aino Juslén, Peter Hovenkamp

Finding our first big Dryopteris affinis!

Dryopteris dilatata:

Dryopteris affinis:

Polystichum setiferum:

Some beautiful sori on several fertile species:

Dryopteris dilatata

Dryopteris affinis

Left: D. filix-mas, right: D. affinis. The indusium margins are a good way to tell them apart.

 Stream with Dryopteris affinis:

Asplenium scolopendrium:

 Dryopteris cristata:

Trip to Helsinki, Finland

Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden at Luomos, the Finnish Museum of Natural History

I've just returned from Helsinki! It's a beautiful city, even in wintry March, and I had a great time working with fern colleagues at the Finnish Museum of Natural History. Aino Juslén and Henry Väre were my hosts, and we have some big projects on Dryopteris, among other things, planned together. We had never met before, despite having co-authored a paper, so it was wonderful to spend a whole week with them. We poured over herbarium specimens they had received on loan from Kew, Berlin, and Stockholm, as well as Helsinki's own great collections, I gave a talk on reticulate evolution in ferns, and we ate some delicious food. I thought I'd share some photos reflecting most of these activities, as well as Helsinki itself.

The entrance to the herbarium

Beautiful wooden cabinets 

Carvings on each of the doors (not necessarily representative of the plants inside...)

Henry, Aino, and me

Sorry vegetarians, but there were lots of delicious sausages to be had...

A sunny day!

Main University of Helsinki building

Finnish Museum of Natural History

Finnish National Theater

Waterfront

Senate Square

Helsinki Cathedral

Statue of Alexander II, who established the Diet of Finland in 1863.

Fern Field Trip at Botany

There is always a fern field trip at the annual Botany conference, and this year was no exception. These trips are a wonderful way to visit new places, see lots of ferns, and catch up with old friends. I look forward to them every summer. This year's trip took us west and a bit south of New Orleans, eventually to Avery Island, the home of Tabasco Sauce, among other things (gators, egrets... see below). We didn't see a huge number of fern species, but there were some exciting items on our "spotted" list, including Ceratopteris pteridoides, a close relative of the nearest thing we have in ferns to a model species - Ceratopteris richardii. I've never seen any Ceratopteris in the field before, so that was a fun siting. Here's the full list of species we saw, at least by my count:

• Asplenium platyneuron
• Azolla caroliniensis
• Ceratopteris pteridoides
• Equisetum hyemale
• Lygodium japonicum
• Pleopeltis polypodioides
• Polystichum acrostichoides
• Salvinia minima
• Thelypteris palustris
• Thelypteris dentata

And some photos of the ferns and folks that day:

Fay-Wei Li  and Mike Barker with Ceratopteris pteridoides

Ceratopteris pteridoides

Azolla caroliniensis

Pleopeltis polypodioides

Asplenium platyneuron

The following photos are of Lygodium japonicum... a terribly invasive fern in parts of the southeastern U.S., but I have to admit that I have always found it awesome looking. There are relatively few true vining ferns, and the Lygodium species are among them. They have dimorphic leaves, with the fertile and sterile pinnae looking decidedly different (lower photo). There is also a native species, Lygodium palmatum, which I've seen in South Carolina.

 

 And always a great find - a gametophyte and baby sporophyte! ID unknown, even by the experts with us.

Tiny sporophyte emerging from remains of a gametophyte

Finally, no field trip in the southeast is complete without alligators, apparently. There is a beautiful egret rookery on Avery Island that we stumbled upon as we rounded a corner - the trees in this swamp were filled with hundreds of snowy white birds (not sure, actually, if they were Snowy Egrets or another species). After admiring them for a few minutes we noticed that several log-like objects were moving through the water towards our party - never a good sign down in these parts. These were smallish gators, and were satisfied with watching us closely (as they usually are), though they swam alongside us at our walking pace as we turned to leave, like a reptilian escort away from (undoubtedly) their nesting grounds. Creepy. I wouldn't be an egret in that swamp if you paid me.