Capturing the green before it’s gone!

I am just back from Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. I’ll tell you all about its awesomeness this week, but right now, dinner is about to be served so I am keeping this short and sweet. As I think I mentioned, Steve is on an assignment to write a story on hazelnuts. The hazelnuts in our area are ripe now, and Steve has been visiting farms and the U of M all week helping with the harvest. Today, we took a walk to check on some wild American hazelnut bushes we found near us, and I happened upon this new-to-me fern in the wild: Royal fern! My very reliable Minnesota plant resource tells me this a native fern. But Wiki says it is native to Europe and the Mediterranean. I got confused. But on further investigation, it looks like genetic testing is reclassifying many of the sub-species/varietals as I type. From what I could glean–this is indeed a native son.

Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis)