Hello! I would like to know which of these species are those Ferns: Pteridium aquilinum Athyrium filix-femina Blechnum spicant Thanks a lot, Valter
Re: Ferns > ID, please! Valter, Not sure where you got the names, but none of your pics look correct for Blechnum spicant. See... http://images.google.com/imgres?img...n-gb:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7SUNA_en-GB&sa=N&um=1 3. Looks as if it could be Pteridium aquilinum.
valterej, I didn't realize that these things Pteridium aquilinum - what we here in Washington State call Bracken fern - apparently grow all over the world. They can be pretty but are also pretty much a pest. The only purpose I've found for them is to pull up the blackish root part, squish it into a pulp and apply the pulp to the rash you can get from stinging nettles. Stinging nettles seem to grow all over too. Do you have nettles in Portugal? barb
Michael, We know this now, but my introduction was probably 60 yrs ago. I was running thru the woods on my way to a neighbors house to show off my new sun suit, tripped over something and fell head long into a bed of nettles. I hated the bracken root and what it did to my new suit. I was black and green all over, but it sure took the sting away. I quickly learned to watch where I was going. barb.
Pteridium aquilinum ssp. aquilinum. Much of the bracken in North America is P. aquilinum ssp. latiusculum. Cheers Harri Harmaja http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/harmaja/index.htm
Harri, I am curious, with respect to your ssp ID: are you making a reasonable assumption from the geographical origin of the photos, or are you able to recognize enough morphology from viewing the photos, despite the underside of the pinnules not being visible, to make an ID? Fellow British Columbians may be interested that E-Flora BC lists both P. aquilinum ssp. lanuginosum and P. a. ssp. latiusculum as present in BC. The former is most common here; the underside of the pinnules is wooly. I live and garden on Bowen Island and struggle to exclude that wooly bracken from much of my garden here off the south west coast of BC.
I'd guess both; the photos are from Portugal, where subsp. latiusculum doesn't occur (in Europe it is only found in northern Scotland, Scandinavia, and the mountains of C Europe), but also on phenology - in subsp. aquilinum, the fronds unfurl slowly with the basal pinnae expanding well before the apical pinnae (as in the photo), whereas in subsp. latiusculum the pinnae all expand at about the same time. Your subsp. lanuginosum doesn't occur in Europe. There is however another subspecies in SW Europe (subsp. atlanticum), not sure offhand how that's distinguished (apart from occurring on limestone soils unlike acid-loving subsp. aquilinum). EDIT: looked up; subsp. atlanticum also distinguished by dense white hairs on the young stems, and even slower, sequential unfurling of the fronds (Watsonia 17: 429-434, 1989).
Michael, actually ssp. latiusculum does not occur outside North America. Instead, we have ssp. pinetorum in North Europe. The tall plant with slowly opening frond segments is common in western, central and southern Europe, and is indeed ssp. aquilinum. In North America, north of Mexico, three subspecies of bracken are present: ssp. latiusculum, ssp. pubescens (syn. ssp. lanuginosum) and ssp. pseudocaudatum. Please, see an article of the world authority of Pteridium, Professor John A. Thomson: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119394289/PDFSTART And my own web article: http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/harmaja/Pteridium.htm Cheers, Harri Harmaja
