#tracheophyte

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#1956 - Austroblechnum chambersii - Lance Water-Fern

This is hardly the last New Zealand fern I’m likely to cover - some people call it the Land of Ferns, and there’s a reason why the Silver Fern Flag is the unofficial flag of the country. This isn’t that species, however.

AKA Blechnum chambersii, nini and rereti. Native to SE Australia, Samoa, Fiji and on the North Island of New Zealand and in many of the coastal forests of South Island. Usually found near creeks in shady, moist forests, where it grows in erect tufts on the forest floor or among rocks, or with downward arching fronds on wet banks as in these photos, or on fallen logs at the bases of tree-ferns.

The sterile and fertile fronds are quite different in appearance. The formermay be up to 60cm long, but the fertile fronds are shorter and limper.

The only known foodplant for the New Zealand moth Batrachedra litterata. In some parts of its range the  starchy rhizomes are eaten raw or roasted.

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#1903 - Microsorum pustulatum ssp. pustulatum - Kangaroo Fern

If you had to describe New Zealand’s climate in one word, that word might be ‘moist’, given the Islands are mountainous roadblocks in the way of every weather front coming across the Pacific, or howling up out of the Antarctic. There’s a reason the Māori-language name of the country is Aotearoa - "land of the long white cloud". @purrdence​’s been over there for a month and has only seen the top of a mountain, unobscured by cloud, once, and that was from a plane flying overhead. Admittedly that might also have something to do with the cyclone that’s closed half the railways and major roads. 

But even if I’m exaggerating about the climate, New Zealand enjoys a wide variety of large and handsome ferns, so I’m going to be discussing a few. 

These ferns, which can grow up to 50cm long, were growing near Huka Falls, where 220,000 liters of water a second roars through a canyon 15m across.  AKA hound's tongue, and in Māori: kōwaowao, or pāraharaha, Kangaroo Fern is also known from the moister parts of Eastern Australia, where is presumably where it got that  common name.  M. pustulatum subsp. howense is endemic to Lord Howe Island. Zealandia has also been suggested as the generic name.

They’re adept epiphytes, common on tree ferns but also branches and trunks of trees, on rocks, logs and occasionally along the ground in wet forests and rainforests. If conditions are suitable, a good garden or terrarium fern.

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#1876 - Asplenium flabellifolium -Necklace Spleenwort

A small fern found in open forest or rainforest. usually on the ground, but sometimes epiphytic. in rock crevices, caves, on fallen logs and tree trunks, beside streams, cliffs, or waterfalls in all states of Australia, and New Zealand. It was initially described by Spanish botanist Antonio José Cavanilles.

Both the scientific name and the common name of the genus are derived from an old belief in Europe that the fern species there were useful for ailments of the spleen, due to the spleen-shaped spore organs on the backs of the fronds. "-wort" is an ancient English term that simply means "plant".

The Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius apparently needed to fill a few pages in his Ten Books on Architecture with a tangent about spleenworts :

"… certain pastures in Crete, on each side of the river Pothereus, which separates the two Cretan states of Gnosus and Gortyna. There are cattle at pasture on the right and left banks of that river, but while the cattle that feed near Gnosus have the usual spleen, those on the other side near Gortyna have no perceptible spleen. On investigating the subject, physicians discovered on this side a kind of herb which the cattle chew and thus make their spleen small. The herb is therefore gathered and used as a medicine for the cure of splenetic people."

On the other hand the ferns were thought to cause infertility in women - I have no idea where they pulled that idea from.

Weeds of Melbourne IDed it for me - they note on the blog that they've found this species in close proximity to the two I've covered previously, on the bluestone-walled dry moat of a government building. Clearly the three enjoy being neighbours.

Asplenium is a very large and diverse genus with over 700 species, and some utterly deranged genetics. Some species are not just diploid or tetraploid but octoploid, their chloroplast genetics is deeply weird, and some species are infamous for how easily they hybridise. Complete slut ferns, and good for them.

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#1875 - Pteris tremula - Tender Brake

Another fern from the stairs on the north bank of the Yarra. 'Brake' is an Old English word for fern in southern England, probably from the same derivation as 'bracken'. Pteris means 'feathery'.

A native to the Yarra and its tributaries, but one promptly domesticated in Melbourne's public and private ferneries, where it was admired for ‘its fine habit, light green fronds, and general hardiness’ (Weekly Times 13/02/1875). Elsewhere, Tender Brake has naturalised in South Africa, the Atlantic islands and California’s San Gabriel and Santa Lucia mountains, after being distributed as an ornamental.

Around Melbourne at least it's not very fussy about growing conditions, apparently perfectly happy in damp soil-filled kerbside cracks or halfway up brick walls.

It's not the only species of brake growing around the city - Chinese Ladder Brake, Pteris vittata, is also well-established. That species is now found in most parts of the world, and is also noteworthy for being a hyperaccumulator of arsenic.

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#1874 - Nephrolepis cordifolia - Fishbone Fern

AKA Sword Fern. The genus are also known as Macho Ferns or Boston Ferns. Nephrolepis refers to the kidney-shaped spore covers, not present in these photos unfortunately.

One of three different ferns I found growing on the wall overlooking the Yarra River behind Federation Square in Melbourne, while I was waiting for ferry tickets.

The species is found in the tropics wordwide, and was likely indigenous to parts of NSW and Queensland, but its arrival in other parts of Australia is probably due to widespread cultivation as an ornamental. Humans may also be responsible for its presence in Hawaii and the Americas. The species has been available from Melbourne nurseries since the 1880s.

On the other hand it's also been cheerfully colonizing parts of Melbourne since at the 1980s at the very least, growing variously on station buildings and platform walls, often with other ferns including one I'll cover next. Everywhere it's been reported from, the colonised structure is thought to receive dependable moisture - from roadway sub-bases and leaky pipes, or in disused brick sewer outfalls.