Fall Ferns
Virginia Chain Ferns
If you did not read the subtitle with the name of the featured fern, you might have thought this photo showed Cinnamon Ferns. This beautiful fern is Virginia Chain Fern (Anchistea virginica). It has had a few name changes. Many of you (including me) learned the latin name as Woodwardia virginica. Although it is listed as being in most of New England and Northern New York (also all of the Southeast, and west to Texas), we only know of three sites in our area (and one in eastern MA which Elizabeth P has shown us). The second and third sites were surprises, which I found while out hiking, not expecting to see a new fern. This last site I found a few weeks ago on Quabbin land in New Salem. I was hiking down a road which has been flooded by beaver for a few years, but when I reached the usually flooded site this year, I could walk the whole length of it! I am worried about the effect of so little rain on our ferns, flowers and other plants and animals, but it was a nice surprise to have a new route. It was even a bigger surprise when I saw a number of these ferns growing in the wettest part of the wetland along the road. They were growing in an area that was too wet to walk into. They are usually found in very wet wetlands.
Virginia Chain Ferns are clearly different from Cinnamon Ferns (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) in a number of ways. Although the photo does not show it well, they grow individually rather than in a circular clump like Cinnamon. They have beautiful smooth deep purple to black stems. The fertile frond is the same shape as the sterile, and has beautiful rusty colored sori in a chain pattern on the back. If you look carefully at the photo, the sori chain pattern is visible on the tip of the fern frond on the left, where it is bent over. The Cinnamon Ferns of course have very different fertile fronds, stalks of cinnamon color arising from the center of their clumps.
The Virginia Chain Fern is usually a late starter in our area, with fiddleheads coming out in early June. It also fades earlier than many of our other ferns. There are many ferns dying back now, some perhaps accelerated by the dry conditions as well as Fall weather. But that still leaves the Dead Fern Society able to enjoy identifying ferns as they fade and with what remains. We can practice some of those Fall/Winter ID skills on our annual November hike the Friday after Thanksgiving. I will get a calendar listing up soon.
10/06/24
Posted: to PV Fern News on Sun, Oct 6, 2024
Updated: Sun, Oct 6, 2024
