Beyond My Garden: maidenhair fern

Paw paw

Yesterday I showed you the plants I found just across our property line. Let me add a scary story to that. The whole property was slated for timbering last year. The timbering had even begun. For two days I moped and cried as the tractors moved in. Luckily, they started near the gas line an hadn't progressed very far when it was discovered that the logger had no valid license or something like that. This year? So - far - so - good.
Now, lets step back onto the home plot, our piece of land which has been routinely pillaged. Most the hill tops around here were clear in the early 1900's. What wasn't grazing land was planted in orchards. Around that time, something happened to the fruit market and the orchards and/or their owners fell into disrepair. When I moved here thirty-two years ago there were still five or six trees on the top of our hill. Now there is one, probably just a child of those early orchards.

So, would any of those more sensitive plants have found a comfortable home in which to prosper? Come with me and we'll see . . . This looks promising.

right away I found some immature Jack-in-the-pulpits. Hooray!

My experience tells me that this is one of the first "deep woods" plants to grow. I suppose it can handle more sun than some of the others. Oh look! here is one with a "jack." Do you see what is growing beside it?

That leaf with its deeply cut lobes is bloodroot! Its seed pod is full of maturing seeds which will soon be carried away by ants who will eat the fat from around the seed then throw it in the ant garbage pile where it will, hopefully, take root and grow.

This fungus is pretty neat too.

Here is a close up, though it gets a little fuzzy.

This is great fun! We hardly have to move and we see all kinds of stuff. Look at that bank over there speckled white with violets.

And there to the right . . . that's an Oxalis, Wood sorrel.

Delicate pale pink flowers flare outward.

It doesn't all look the same, does it? As we push on through the tangle of branches we see these Wood sorrel plants . . .

Is it a mutation or something different in the soil that makes those distinctive red lines on the leaves? Or could it just be a different variety. Do you know?