A very exciting thing has happened - I've had my mobile 'phone upgraded to the sleek, modern, stylish and ultra-'hip' Motorola PEBL. This means that I'm now able to take pictures of reasonable quality, transfer them to my computer by USB and upload them to my blog.
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Just to prove the point, here's a picture of my
Osmunda regalis that is doing extremely well in the garden in Botley.
Considering that I had given it up for dead after it withered last summer, I was delighted to see it producing fronds of 18-24" this year!
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Here's a close-up of a diamorphic frond with the sporangia. I think these ferns are really cool. They are quite difficult to propagate because the chlorophyll-bearing spores are only viable for a short time.
I once visited an extraordinary stand of
Osmunda with the BPS in the New Forest. The plants were growing in a knee-deep bog and were taller than me (I'm 6'2"!). The sporangia were ripe and we were almost choking in the dusty spores that were being released each time we jogged a plant.
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My sporlings are doing pretty well from when they were potted on. I've taken the cover off the greenhouse because it was too difficult to water them. I will try and get them out of the greenhouse and onto the patio floor. Here's a picture of most of them.
Last night, whilst routing through my letter rack I found a whole pack of spores that I misplaced last year. I think that I'll be sowing them soon so that I can grow them on through the winter and put them out into the greeenhouse in the spring.