![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
January 1: Resurrection fern
Jan. 1st, 2011 11:56 amResurrection fern lives all over the southeastern United States, other warm and temperate parts of the Americas, and apparently Africa as well. It's an air plant, so it gets its moisture from the air and surfaces and its nutrients from the tree bark it grows on.
I see it circling oaks and cedars like a shaggy beard. It's well named; when the weather is dry, it curls up and turns brown as if it has died, but when moisture returns, it perks right up and turns green again. This is what has happened in the woods near my parents' house, and this week I've been seeing some healthy specimens on the old mossy cedar trees.
In the dormant and green phases
When I was looking up the fern's range, I learned that Iron & Wine (the singer-songwriter Samuel Beam) has a song called "Resurrection Fern" and it's very pretty.
I see it circling oaks and cedars like a shaggy beard. It's well named; when the weather is dry, it curls up and turns brown as if it has died, but when moisture returns, it perks right up and turns green again. This is what has happened in the woods near my parents' house, and this week I've been seeing some healthy specimens on the old mossy cedar trees.
In the dormant and green phases
When I was looking up the fern's range, I learned that Iron & Wine (the singer-songwriter Samuel Beam) has a song called "Resurrection Fern" and it's very pretty.
