Fern

A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods. I always thought so myself; the Maine woods never seem so fresh and alive as in wet weather. Then all the needles on the evergreens wear a sheath of silver; ferns seem to have grown to almost tropical lushness and every leaf has its edging of crystal drops. Strangely colored fungi—mustard-yellow and apricot and scarlet—are pushing out of the leaf mold and all the lichens and the mosses have come alive with green and silver freshness.

Rachel Carson

~

This first-light mountain,
its east peak and west peak.
Its first-light cree
ks:
Lagunitas,
Redwood,
Fern.

Jane Hirshfield

Poem: Mountainal

Poem: The Art of Being

Poem: Grace Among the Ferns

Poem: Fern

Poem: The Fern

Poem: Fiddlehead Ferns

Poem: Fern Hill

Poem: “Thin little leaves of wood fern, ribbed and toothed”

Poem: The Decorative Airport Fern Is Not What It Pretends to Be

Poem: On First Seeing a U.S. Forest Service Aerial Photo of Where I Live

Poem: Planting the Sand Cherry

Poem: A Celtic Miscellany

Poem: Watching the Sea Go

Poem: in the meadow magenta

Poem: In Childhood

Poem: For Once, Then, Something

Poem: Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard

Poem: Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks

Poem: Palladium

Poem: The hard part

Poem: Birdsong

Poem: Onta

Poem: hill wife

Poem: A Question

Poem: Caro Nome

Poem: Our Vanishing

Poem: Galah’s Skull

Poem: Skunk Cabbage

Poem: On Quaking Bog

Poem: Interrupted Meditation

Poem: Blind Joy

Poem: À la Belle Étoile

Poem: Killary Harbor

Poem: Visiting a dead man on a summer day

Poem: The Pilot in the Jungle

Poem: Locust Trees in Late May

Poem: Backyard

Poem: Blackberries

Poem: Slant

Poem: Flow

Poem: Rail

Upstream

Unfurl the secrets of ferns

Fern unfurling

Ferns get freaky

Shades of green

American Fern Society

British Pteridological Society

More fern societies

Yet more fern societies

Tempskya

Psaronius

Cyatheales

Platycerium superbum

Angiopteris evecta

Platycerium

Lygodium japonicum

Psilotum nudum

Azolla

Osmunda regalis

Matonia pectinata

Matteuccia

Lycophyte

Pteridophyte

Carboniferous

Fern