Fond of Fronds

That yellow blossomed thing with the blue berries and pointy leaves attacks me when I'm footling out the front. It's not even my plant! @ViewAhead

 

Our neighbours have a quite massive holly tree and we get a lot of dropped holly leaves right where I grow most of the ferns. I've embraced it. It creates a nice leaf litter layer which is certainly good for moisture retention and it must be good for critters too. We also get leaves from our semi-evergreen Spanish oak (turner). The good thing is that for both the leaf fall is relatively steady rather than a sudden flush. Time will tell if it is too much of a good thing ..

 

Not a happy summer for ferns here, but concluding with some fresh fronds, a yearly returning event. Polypodium cambricum got its new fronds about a month ago. Always a wonderful fern to take me into autumn. Below that we have Dryopteris atrata persisting but certainly not flourishing with some Asplenium trichomanes that did quite well and lift the spirit. They seem easily able to perk up with some TLC (rain water really) after a hot period.

 

Same theme as the last post: green shoots offsetting a grizzled survivor. Here the green shoots are Gymnocarpum dryopteris - Oak fern, an understory plant. It is beneath an oak, so hopefully it will start to feel at home. It's not yet expanding but the fresh shoots are a welcome sight. In view above it is a suffering tatting fern, Athyrium filix-femina 'Frizelliae'.

PS I wonder if this thread could become a sticky thread - not sure how to go about it. It doesn't need to but perhaps it is suitable?

 

All my ferns are doing well in containers but I'm afraid to put them in the garden. Any I've tried, I've had to rescue - apart from dryopteris.
But the good thing is, they're close to the house so easily enjoyed

 

I find the opposite. Those in containers struggle a bit, but if I plant them out, they look much happier. Must say most of mine have managed the drought pretty well. The Japanese painted varieties have died back early, but the others are OK!

 

Oh super. Thanks @shiney ! I intend to keep posting about ferns for a long while and there seems to be a bunch of us. It's a great place here

 

Please do @shiney looking forward to it. I'm actually not very good at identifying ferns, it's a slightly frustrating aspect of my crush . I'll post soon about a seedling fern that miraculously grew in my dry Cambridgeshire patio. I've been umming and ahing for two years what it might be, I now think it might be a shuttlecock fern.

 

I have kept all the labels. Unfortunately, they're not attached to the plants! The photos or drawings on the labels aren't much help

 

About 18 months ago @BB3, @pitter-patter and @LG_ and myself all had small fern seedlings. Any news of them? Mine has continued to bedevil me. Right from the start it seems to have been developing a trunk, but perhaps more likely that is an erect rhizome. I have some theories, but none coherent or sufficiently supported. I'll need to look closer at its crown and unfurling fronds and those of other ferns. A begonia has also self-seeded in the pot for companionship.

 

Mine turned out to be a dryopteris.
Mine share their space with nemesias which seed all over the shop.

 

I moved house in December and haven’t been able to check on my fern since. Before leaving, I placed it in a shady spot in the garden.

 

I can't find where I said that! But I think they were probably the ones growing around a potted Acer. If so, I took a while to get round to doing anything about them... until last month in fact, when I teased them out of that pot and potted them up individually. Most were Dryopteris filix-mas, as expected, but I was delighted to find a few Polystichum tsussimense too. Squirrels have excavated some of the pots a couple of times, but they're all still alive so far.