Learn your Settle Ferns: - Three ferns at the entrance to St John's Church Settle

Wall Rue; Hart’s-tongue Fern; Maidenhair Spleenwort 

Have you noticed the the tiny ferns growing on the red brick garden-wall next to the telegraph pole with the signpost for St John’s church, on Church Street at the entrance to St John’s?

 

Ferns do not have flowers  are an ancient lineage of plants, much older than flowering plants.

 The leaves, called fronds, are divided into pinnae (leaflets). If you look at the back of mature fronds you will see brown blobs where the spores are produced.

 Our ferns  here are rather wind scorched - but they are a good introduction to the ferns that grow on cliffs and down grykes in limestone pavement.

 Maidenhair Spleenwort has a black stem and opposite round leaflets - called pinnae

 

Maidenhair Spleenwort

Wall rue has very irregularly lobed leaflets and is the tiniest of the three

 

Harts tongue fern has a frond that is not divided into pinnae - it is a simple strap shape.  Our specimen is very stunted - most fronds are only a few cm where as in woods and shady gardens they can grow to 30 cm long.

 

Have you got any ferns in your garden or on your walls?

 

Craven Conservation Group uses our church for its talks on the third Thursday of the month. This month - 17^th March 2022 at 7.30pm - the group is pleased to have THE PRESIDENT of the British Pteridological Society giving a talk on ferns. (Dr Alison Evans is also a member of Craven Conservation group and lives near Earby)  all members of St Johns - indeed everyone from Settle area - are welcome to these talks. We hope we will also learn more about some of the rare species which grow in our area.