Fiddleheads of Spring

Back in April I posted about fiddleheads seen in the Brookside Gardens Conservatory.  Now the ferns are coming up outdoors in our area. When I was at Longwood Gardens last week there were some nicely labeled fiddleheads and I’ve added more examples of Cinnamon ferns from Brookside Gardens (they were a little further along in Maryland than at Longwood in Pennsylvania). The Cinnamon Ferns have two types of fronds: Sterile and spore-bearing. In the picture to the left the taller green fiddleheads are the sterile fronds; the spore bearing fronds are the light brown, short fiddleheads.

As they unfurl they look even more different

The Christmas Ferns were uncurling too but did not seem as interesting this time.

The Ostrich Ferns do look a lot like feathers as they begin to uncurl. I think they are my favorites of this group.

Fiddleheads in the Brookside Conservatory

I always look for ferns sending up their fiddleheads through the leaf mulch in the spring. They have not appeared outside in my part of Maryland…but there were some fiddleheads among the ferns in the Brookside Gardens conservatory.

The plant in the conservatory was a tree fern I have been checking every time I got to the conservatory. There were coils with coils….tight spirals that would uncurl into the fronds.