WhatFinger


The real fern fanatic may try cultivating Walking Fern

The Fern That Walks



When Canada's first long-distance walking trail was formed in the middle years of the last century the organizers chose as their symbol the Walking Fern, Asplenium microphyllum. Ontario's Bruce Trail follows the Niagara Escarpment from Niagara Fall for 800 kilometres north to the tip of the Bruce Peninsular. As elsewhere in eastern North America, this rugged limestone country offers an especially suitable habit for this unusual fern, unlike almost any other. If your idea of a fern is an upright plant with lacy and, well, fern-like foliage, the Walking Fern going to surprise you. That is if you can find it. W. Sherwood Fox wrote in The Bruce Beckons (1962) of the east coast precipitous cliffs overlooking the spectacular Georgian Bay:
"To the fern-fancier, I commend a visit to the chaos of immense angular limestone boulders gathered at the base of the cliffs. On their shaded, mossy sides thrive many kinds of the daintiest rock-loving ferns that grow. A patient quest will be well repaid. The seeker can hardly fail to come upon the strangest fern of all--the Walking Fern, the Daddy-long-legs of our native plants, which steps daintily over the bare face of the limestone on its threadlike fronds." It may also spread in colonies over fallen mossy logs, even epiphytically on living trunks. The ribbon-like perennial foliage may vary from five to as much as 30 centimetres long, ending in a long, narrow tip. When these tips touch a suitable surface, they form plantlets, hence their name or, in French, Doradille ambulante, for they may also be found in southern Quebec. Rare, although not threatened in Ontario and Quebec, it is also wide-ranging south of the border in similar habitats from eastern Minnesota down through Wisconsin and Michigan as far south as northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, even into Oklahoma, eastern Kansas, and Iowa. The real fern fanatic may try cultivating Walking Fern. According David B. Lellinger (1985) choose a moist, basic potting mix or in soil to which chips of limestone rock have been added, in partial sun. But please, do not collect from the wild. Check out local stone yards for rockery stones that may still have specimens attached. Besides wild locations are just that--wild. Unless well prepared, explorers can easily risk life and limb.

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Wes Porter -- Bio and Archives

Wes Porter is a horticultural consultant and writer based in Toronto. Wes has over 40 years of experience in both temperate and tropical horticulture from three continents.


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