Summer Ferns 2024

Netted Chain Ferns

Netted Chain Ferns (Loniseria areolata) develop later in the season than most of our more common local ferns. We enjoy finding their fiddleheads in early June after many of the other ferns have developed into their full size. We start finding the earliest of our local fern fiddleheads in March (or this year the end of February) and most of the others develop fiddleheads in April, a few in May. Some species continue to develop occasional new little fiddleheads throughout the summer. But the Netted Chain and Virginia Chain Ferns get started the very end of May and beginning of June.

The Netted Chain and Virginia Chain Ferns used to be in the same Genus (Woodwardia), but the Netted Chain Fern now is Loniseria instead of Woodwardia and Virginia Chain Fern is now Anchistea virginica. They both have sori or fruit dots that are arranged in long lines like a chain of sausages, although their arrangements are different from each other. The skinny fronds in the upper middle of this photo are the fertile fronds of the Netted Chain Ferns, and the sori are in long chainlike double rows on the back sides of the leaves. The sterile leaves are in the bottom half of the photo and look a bit like sensitive ferns, but are a glossy green, with wavy fine toothed edges, different from the more deeply lobed Sensitive. Probably the easiest way to tell them apart if not side by side (beside the very different fertile fronds), is that the bottom pinnae of the Netted Chain Ferns are alternate, while the bottom pinnae of the Sensitive Fern are almost directly opposite from each other.

We found them growing with the Virginia Chain Ferns, Sensitive, Marsh and Massachusetts Ferns in a mucky wet woods.

A reminder that our August Fern Walk is this coming Sunday, August 18th from 1-3 PM in Gill. We will meet in the parking lot of the Bartons Cove Campground a little before 1PM so we can maybe share a few cars since parking is limited along Pisgah Mountain Rd where we are going. See the map of the Bartons Cove Campground entrance attached to the Calendar event. There is a really nice assortment of about 24 ferns, most right along the roadside.

Posted: to PV Fern News on Fri, Aug 16, 2024
Updated: Sat, Aug 17, 2024