Apropos of Pellaea: heavy metal for your rock garden

Pellaea bridgesii

 I was discussing Pellaea with one of my colleagues at lunch today: I haven't scanned the nearly thousand blog posts I've done for Prairiebreak or a few other places I blog now and again--but I'm quite sure I've never blogged about Pellaea. More is the pity--since I doubt a day in my life passes without my admiring Pellaea in my garden (I have several happy specimens I never seem to remember to photograph).  This picture haunted me for decades: I scanned a transparency I took on the Winnemucca trail at a NARGS AGM that took place at Tahoe 30 years ago (or more) in the Sierra Nevada. That was a fantastic conference, one of the happy consequences of it was that Sean Hogan met Parker Sanderson there. It is perhaps no accident that after more than three decades of plant yearning, I obtained this fern from Sean's fantastic Cistus Nursery in late June and it's growing happily in my garden. These are the things that warm the cockles of a plant nerd's heart--and if you're reading this you probably understand. Didn't get the heavy metal reference? It's their fronds--which look and feel more like aluminum than they do leaves.

Pellaea wrightiana

How, please tell me HOW could I have taken such a wretched picture of this fern? I was on a field trip with Scotty Smith, who took me to find it: it grows on a steep, nearly inaccessible cliff on Flagstaff Mountain perhaps 2 miles from where I grew up. It is hundreds of miles north of other stations for this gem--I still wonder if it didn't germinate from spore that might have wafted up when I grew it in my Boulder garden 45 years ago from plants given to me from the Oklahoma panhandle...we'll never know!

Pellaea wrightiana

Here's another wretched picture of it: I have seen this (or perhaps just plain P. ternifolia) growing abundantly in Chihuahua, Texas, New Mexico--but do you think I ever took a decent picture of it? I may have a better unscanned transparency in my dark, basement dungeon where I keep those things...)

Pellaea atropurpurea self sown on a boulder at Denver Botanic Gardens

I shall never forget seeing this fern growing luxuriantly behind the branches of espaliers in the gorgeous walled Potager at the great Biltmore estate--sheesh, that was nearly FORTY years ago--life moves along a little too quickly. I still wonder if those massive clumps of this wonderful plant--hundreds of them in the mortar behind the fruit trees--persisted: they were my favorite feature of that great garden (those, and the wild azaleas that were still blooming profusely on a steep slope). Since then I've seen it twice in Colorado where it's very rare--once north of Fort Collins and once near Kim in se Colorado. And I have several luxuriant, happy clumps in my own garden (one of only two plants that Tony Avent once asked me for spore--and I'm kicking myself I've not come through for him). At least don't you think I could get a decent picture! I'll go home right away and see what I can do. I admire it every day there.

Pellaea atropurpurea

But no, this is all I could muster from my garden: you can see it's pretty happy there!

Pellaea atropurpurea

 Another shot from my garden: there's really no excuse for me not to have collected this for Tony. Still not too late! Shucks: he lives just downhill a bit from Biltmore: they could give him bucketloads!

Pellaea breweri

I took this in Wyoming (I think). Or maybe Idaho. Or possibly California--I've seen this lovely thing several times, but not in Colorado. My colleague Mike Kintgen has seen it here however (it's only known from the nw corner of our state near where I was born).  It's another I'd love to grow: but I'm thrilled to have P. bridgesii at least (don't get me wrong!).

Pellaea atropurpurea

Another gem I must collect spore of. This is one of my all time favorites--a micro-cousin of P. atropurpurea. It is quite common in the Bighorns, Absoroka and Owl Creek mountains of Wyoming (and other parts of the middle Rockies). It somewhat resembles the slightly larger Pellaea suksdorfiana (or Pellaea glabella var. simplex) or whatever they're calling the gem that grows everywhere on the cliffs around Rifle Gap in Western Colorado. I know I've taken dozens of pictures of that--but none of them scanned. Or those wonderful California Pellaea with intricate lacy fronds (mucronata) I've seen all over that state? Or Pellaea brachyptera I purchased once from Siskiyou Rare Plant Nursery and killed?

And what of Pellaea truncata with its strange disjunction near Canyon City I've visited repeatedly over the decades? Or a half dozen Pellaea I've admired in Mexico--one of which I also saw in South Africa that can get a meter long! Where are my pictures of these?

Hang in there: I'm not done with this marvelous metallic genus. Gardening could be described as a series of serial love affairs with genera: this is one old girlfriend I keep dating however!