Cederberg region of South Africa

Today's trip took us to yet another new region of South Africa, this time the Cederberg region, which is northeast of the Cape Town area. We didn't find many ferns, but it was a beautiful day and a lovely place nonetheless.

Visit to Table Mountain, South Africa

Our next field trip here was to the famous Table Mountain in the center of Cape Town. Because of high winds, the cable car that takes you to the top of the mountain wasn't running, and so we walked up a path that leads to the base of the vertical cliffs, and then took the Contour Path around to the southern tip of Table Mountain. The plants were incredible, both the ferns and flowering plants!

View of Cape Town from the contour path, looking west

Ferraria crispa, an incredible member of the Iris family

Cheilanthes multifida

Cheilanthes multifida

Cheilanthes hastata

Blechnum punctulatum

Mohria caffrorum (left) and Cheilanthes multifida (right)

Pellaea pteroides

When we got to the southern point we walked briefly around it and found a couple more ferns - including a very exciting find, Schizaea tenella. Schizaeaceae is a neat family whose members I don't often encounter, so it was very cool to find it here.

Schizaea tenella

Todea barbarea

And finally, some views from the point and the walk back down...

Ferns of Cederburg, South Africa

Greetings from South Africa! I'm in the middle of a three-week trip to the Cape Region of SA to work with my colleagues from the Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki on fern collections for our shared research projects. We've had a fantastic time exploring the incredible Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, and have started making forays out into the field. Today's trip was to the Cederburg region north west of Cape Town. Almost the entire fern flora here is completely to knew to all of us, so it has been great fun bringing plant material back to our B&B to go through with the key and figure out what things are. We're also taking samples for DNA analysis and making herbarium vouchers (with permission from all the land owners where we're collecting). If anyone is interested in a great book on the ferns of this region, I highly recommend Ferns of Southern Africa by Crouch, Klopper, and Burrows - it has become our Bible since we've been here!

The trail we took at Cederburg led from a picnic area upslope towards a waterfall high up a mountainside. The first fern we encountered was Cheilanthes hastata. Cheilanthes is a genus of fern in Pteridaceae whose members are often found in dry habitats - not surprising that they are at home in the Cape area.

We encountered C. hastata regularly on the walk up to the waterfall, and the other most common species at the lower elevations was this one, Mohria caffrorum: 

And here's a shot looking back across the valley when were about halfway up to the waterfall.

When we finally reached our destination, there were ferns galore to greet us. Here are photos of all the species we saw (I think!). Quite a diverse assemblage!

Gleichenia polypodioides

Gleichenia polypodioides

Hymenophyllum tunbrigense right beside the waterfall

More Hymenophyllum tunbrigense

Pellaea pteroides

Pellaea pteroides

Todea barbarea

Todea barbarea

Todea fiddlehead

Elk Island field trip at Botany 2015

I just returned from this year's annual Botany conference, which was held in Edmonton, Canada. As always, I arrived early to go on the fern field trip. This year's trip was particularly special, as it was led by Dr. Don Farrar of Iowa State University, the world expert on the fern genus Botrychium and its relatives (lots of movement and renaming of species in this group have led to many former Botrychium species having been moved to other genera in the last few years). It was a wonderful field trip and we saw quite a few species, including those pictured below.

The whole group focused on a fern finding

Botrychium matricariifolium

Botrychium pallidum

Botrychium simplex

Sceptridium multifidum

Beautiful token angiosperm: Phleum pratense

Dryopteris celsa at Panther Creek

On the way back to Gainesville from western Virginia (I drove), I stopped to visit an old friend and colleague, Tom Goforth of Crowdog Native Ferns and Gardens in Pickens, South Carolina. I spent a few lovely days with Tom to catch up, and we visited one of my favorite sites from my PhD studies, a place Tom has known of and visited for years: Panther Creek in northeastern Georgia. The highlight of this spot, for me, is Dryopteris celsa. This was the first place I ever saw this fern, one of the allopolyploids in the North American Dryopteris complex. Getting to the populations of D. celsa at this site involves wading across a rive and choosing the right valley to walk up on the other side, amid dense forest and a thriving understory. It's a really beautiful place:

However, we came across an unfortunate surprise once we found the valley with D. celsa. The population of this fern, which had been thriving the last time I visited four or so years ago, has been drastically reduced. We saw very many fewer adult individuals of D. celsa than last time, and almost no evidence of new recruitment in the form of young sporophytes. Tom and I are both at a loss as to what may have caused this; climate change and wild hogs seem like the two most likely suspects. The remaining D. celsa individuals are still lush and beautiful, but I worry now that the population may be on its way out.

Virginia ferns, part III: Vittaria appalachiana

The highlight of our trip to Virginia (posts I and II) was finding Vittaria appalachiana in a perfect sandstone habitat at the end of a trail near Mountain Lake Biological Station. The trail was called Bear Cliffs trail, and it terminates in some craggy shallow gorges that are full of ferns and other vegetation. Our group included several researchers who have worked extensively on fern gametophytes and several gametophyte-only species - these are ferns that never make sporophytes (the big, green, leafy things that we think of when we think about ferns). A classic example of this type of life history in ferns is Vittaria appalachiana, also known as the Appalachian gametophyte, which occurs in sheltered sandstone rockhouses throughout the Appalachian mountains and plateau region. After a thorough hunt, we were able to turn up some V. appalachiana tucked back in one of the sandstone shelters!

Typical sheltered habitat for V. appalachiana

The dark crevices are where these ferns like to live

Joel Nitta, a grad student at Harvard, after gametophytes!

The product of a successful search - a tweezer-ful of Appalachian gametophytes