Are you growing a hen & chickens fern at home? If so, chances are it’s a fake, unless you dug it out of the bush. Hen & chickens ferns get their common name from their production of bulbils, or vegetative outgrowths, on the upperside of their fronds. These bulbils are the ‘chickens’ and the fronds… Read more »
Posts written by Leon Perrie
The false hen and chickens fern
Most hen & chickens ferns in cultivation are the false hen & chickens fern, Asplenium ×lucrosum, rather than Asplenium bulbiferum. The two are easily distinguished. Asplenium ×lucrosum is a sterile hybrid between Asplenium bulbiferum and Asplenium dimorphum. The “×” preceding “lucrosum” indicates it is a hybrid. The two parent species – Asplenium bulbiferum and Asplenium… Read more »
Black Nightshade – it’s (nearly) everywhere
Black nightshade has been in the news recently, after its berries turned up masquerading as peas in packs of frozen vegetables. Without wanting to be seen to cast aspersions on your aptitude for gardening, there is a good chance black nightshade is in your garden. Black nightshade is a small plant (less than 75 cm tall)… Read more »
Want to learn about mosses and liverworts?
I am helping to organise the 2009 John Child Bryophyte Workshop. Bryophytes comprise mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. The Workshop also covers lichens, and it provides a great opportunity to learn more about these fascinating plants. Novices are welcome, with guidance provided for beginners. The workshop will be based at Pukeora Estate, near Waipukurau in Hawke’s Bay,… Read more »
Weedy ferns
Chris Horne of the Wellington Botanical Society recently sent me a fern frond they collected on one of their trips. Although the frond is small and lacking the diagnostic reproductive characters, I think it is the introduced holly fern (Cyrtomium falcatum). It looks like the shining spleenwort (Asplenium oblongifolium), but the flanges, or ‘teeth’, of the… Read more »
More rare maidenhair spleenwort.
![These rocks are host to several plants of tetraploid maidenhair spleenwort.]](http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/asplenium_trichomanes_habitat-300x300.jpg)
The rare, tetraploid maidenhair spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes subsp. quadrivalens) has only recently been rediscovered in New Zealand. Several people have contacted me with possible additional sightings. As described by the Scoop website, Jack Ritchie had a maidenhair spleenwort self-sow on a rock used to construct a water feature in his nursery, Tree Guys, in Otane…. Read more »
What’s a punga?
THIS PAGE HAS BEEN SUPERSEDED. A more comprehensive account of New Zealand’s tree ferns is available here. ‘Punga’ is a quintessential Kiwi word used to refer to tree ferns or sometimes, more specifically, the trunks of tree ferns. But in his book A Dictionary of Maori Plant Names, James Beever does not record any tree… Read more »
Coralline red algae
Botany has recently acquired a unique collection: a special group of calcified red algae known as the corallines. Coralline algae are abundant and ubiquitous throughout the world’s oceans, playing very important roles in marine ecosystems. The encrusting, or crustose, species can form unusual lumpy, warty-looking layers in the intertidal, sometimes completely covering rocks. Perhaps you… Read more »
Identifying maidenhair spleenwort ferns.
The maidenhair spleenwort is a spleenwort fern (Asplenium) that (supposedly) looks like a maidenhair fern (Adiantum, see below). The 600 or so of the world’s spleenworts are characterised by having their reproductive structures in lines away from the margins of their fronds’ undersides. Two maidenhair spleenworts occur in New Zealand. They look very similar, but… Read more »
We have DNA
The first step after collecting samples for genetic analyses is to extract the DNA. Lara and I do this for lancewood and five-finger plants (Pseudopanax) by: freezing a small piece of leaf tissue in liquid nitrogen (-196 degrees C !) and grinding it as finely as possible. adding a detergent to release the DNA from… Read more »