Ferns can be such interesting plants. In the summer of 2012 I bought a Dryopteris filix -mas 'Euxinensis' and it has turned into an impressive plant grown in a container. It softens a rather ugly corner. In the summer of 2013, I took macro photographs of the
sori on the back of my Cyrtomium fortunei (Holly Fern) fronds (we commonly refer to them as spores, which is incorrect) and I had never realised how interesting they could be. Sori is the collective name given for all the individual sporangia (little circles) which we often see on the back of fern fronds. The sporangia produce the spores. Today, I was mooching in the rainy garden (yes, we are back to rain again after a sunny day yesterday) and I noticed a spider's web on the Dryopteris. It was sparkling with raindrops and when I looked closer, through my camera's lens, I could see that some sporangia had fallen onto the web and looked like tiny gold nuggets.
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| A golden sporangium on a spider's web - macro photograph |
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| Golden sporangia on a spider's web |
In the below photograph we can see the spider on its web and to the right, on the end of a silken thread, a wrapped up blob of a parcel which was once some poor insect that has now become the spider's meal.
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| Spider and golden sporangia on a spider's web |
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| Dryopteris filix -mas 'Euxinensis' spore-producing sporangia |
The little things around the edges of the sporangia (above and below) are called annulus which assist in spore dispersal.
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| Dryopteris filix -mas 'Euxinensis' spore-producing sporangia |
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| Dryopteris filix-mas 'Euxinensis' |