Harts Tongue Variants and Southern Polypody (18th/19th Nov 2015)

Sunday 22nd November 2015

Found another new to me Scollie variant in Dalton Crags today and here are the photos below:

 Looked interesting especially with the curvatures

This shows the same plant with two similar fronds the one at the top and another down at the bottom of the photo. 

Also of interest to me today was my find of a strange Maidenhair Spleenwort (asplenium trichomanes) shown below:

Unusual trichomanes

This was in a damp darkened cleft of the limestone escarpment and actually hidden behind some normal Maidenhair Spleenwort and mosses and herb robert (central), but if you look closely you can see the lobed spleenwort lurking.  I have gps'd and will be keeping a close eye on this. By the way within less than one metre is a good population of Wall Rue.

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Thursday 19th November 2015

On the Bird situation.  I had a small five party of Siskin calling and flying above the large trees on the edge of the Plain Quarry car park.  Also had 4 Mistle Thrushes at the top of Lower Dalton Crags. One Green Woodpecker crossing Dalton deforested.  Also two Snipe flushed just east beyond the Trig Point (Ploverlands). Robert Ashworth also had a single Goldcrest near Plain Quarry this morning. Had a good look around for a Shrike, but nothing doing at the moment.

This morning whilst on my way up through Dalton Crags I again found yet another Harts Tongue Fern which was different to the norm and looks very interesting. At first viewing I just thought the serrated edges were a weather worn situation, but on closer observation, you can see that they are a purpose natural occurrence on this specimen, which is confirmed by the representative individual veining pertaining to each serration, and you can see it here in this first photo.  Here are the photos:

Harts Tongue Fern with serrated edging  (Click over to enlarge)

Wednesday 18th November 2015

What miserable weather!

I have been out over the past few days at various times when it was not too bad and seen one or two bits and pieces of fungi and ferns.  So here are my findings:

Harts Tongue Fern  

It certainly gives the appearance of difference! especially noticeable in the front central frond (also shown below) and its appearance in general stands out from the "norm".  Another interesting indicator was that the fronds did not bear any "sori" on the rear side although the frond lengths (approx 10-12") seemed to be of maturity.

Showing a clearer photo of the main frond

This photo gives a better view of one of the fronds which has a "lumpy" make up.

Rear of the frond showing a lack of "sori"

Also whilst out yesterday I found some more of the rare Southern Polypody (polypodium cambricum) in a new area of Dalton Crags and will obviously inform the County Recorder.  The area shows quite a few specimens over a approx area of one metre diameter.

Now then I do have a cracker here but its been very difficult to photograph, but hopefully I can give you some idea.  Its a "deformed" Harts Tongue Fern and actually does have 5 separate heads to the frond (of which two of the heads do contain Sori).  Its hard to show because of the entanglement but really interesting.  Also a similar occurance but to a lesser scale was also happening with another frond within the same group (see photos below)

This shows the deformed Harts Tongue fronds in situ (note x2)  (Click over to enlarge)

I have attempted here to separate the five heads  (Click over to enlarge)

Showing the entanglement in situ - also note behind frond  (Click over to enlarge)

Showing the rear with Sori on two of the heads  (Click over to enlarge)

There maybe some more stuff to add to the blog later so please try and check out again if you can later.