In the summer of 2012 I bought a Dryopteris filix -mas 'Euxinensis' and it has turned into an impressive plant grown in a container. It softens a rather ugly corner. In the summer of 2013, I took macro photographs of the sori on the back of my Cyrtomium fortunei (Holly Fern) fronds (we commonly refer to them as spores, which is incorrect) and I had never realised how interesting they could be. Sori is the collective name given for all the individual sporangia (little circles) which we often see on the back of fern fronds. The sporangia produce the spores. |
A golden sporangium on a spider's web - macro photograph
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Today, I was mooching in the rainy garden and I noticed a spider's web on the Dryopteris. It was sparkling with raindrops and when I looked closer, through my camera's lens, I could see that some sporangia had fallen onto the web and looked like tiny gold nuggets.