Tag Archive | New York
The Elusive Fern
It is almost impossible to see this fern unless you get on your hands and knees and look for it in peat bogs, sphagnum hummocks and wet interdunal swales. That is because this fern is tiny. It grows only to a height of three to four inches. Additionally, it does not look like your […]
The Tasty Fern
One summer day, when I was walking along a wetland trail in New York, I was about to cross a small spring fed brook, when I happened across a muskrat. I stopped dead in my tracks to observe it without frightening the muskrat away. It walked up to a four-foot tall royal fern and proceeded […]
The Aromatic Fern
Your sense of smell can be helpful in identifying plant species. Wintergreen plants smell just like wintergreen life savers. Many of the mint species have minty odors and garlic mustard, a weedy herb, smells like garlic. The hay-scented fern has a distinctive aroma of freshly cut hay when crushed or bruised. It is an intricately […]
The Sensitive Fern
Curious? You are not going to hurt the feelings of this fern. It is a fern sensitive to cold weather and the fall frosts. Like many ferns, it grows in freshwater wetlands and moist woodlands in the eastern half of the U.S.
The Hairy Fern
One of the earliest ferns to poke through the ground in freshwater wetlands in the eastern U.S. and Canada is the Cinnamon Fern. As is true of many ferns when this plant first appears, it looks like the top of a fiddle thus it is called a fiddle head. This “fiddle” will unfurl into a […]
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