The magic of my unfolding ferns

About a week ago I peered out of my bedroom window at my fern bank under the slatted aluminium steps running down from the balcony to the garden. What was going on with those ferns? Not a lot it seemed. Then I noticed what looked like three dead brown fern stalks which I must have forgotten to trim off last year. So I headed out, secateurs at the ready – only to realise that far from being dead fronds from year, they were dusky pink new fronds gradually uncurling themselves up into the light. So I started to look more closely.

First at the big, muscular ferns which, having reached nearly a metre in height last year, had withered and died away to nothing come our nasty blast of icy winter. Had they really died away altogether? At first I thought yes, then I realised that nestling right down at the base of the old leaves were six or eight chestnut brown hairy corms, curled into each other as though asleep – which is I guess what they still were – just waiting for the moment to emerge.

Next door was another  of last year’s ferns looking even more unpromising – but no… No corms to be seen this time but three tiny curled up green snakes, cautiously pushing their tips up through the debris of last year.

Next door to that was one of those ferns with long tongue like leaves which keep their leaves throughout the winter even if they do look a bit tatty. Nothing happening there – but again I was wrong. Look down into the centre of the plant and tiny new curls, all covered in downy pale blond fluff, were pushing their way up through the old leaves ready, as soon as they hit the light, to burst forth into new slender pale green tongues.

Behind that was a more ‘common’ fern whose new leaf stalks were already well grown but whose tips were still curled over into  roccoco ‘S’s, each edged with pale fluffy hairs.

And then there was what I had mistaken as old dead stalks. In fact the brown stalks had already strode skywards but the dusky pink leaves remained tightly furled, hugging the stalks and curling right over at the tip.

And then what I think is called a fiddlehead fern – named for the ornamental scroll at the end of a violin’s neck. Tiny leaves curled into a tight spiral at the end of the stalk just waiting for a touch of sun to stretch out their fronds into wide green leaves.

And finally, down at the end of the bed, one of the tiniest ferns that I had bought last year, not more than 10 cm tall, that obviously could not wait for all of this gradual unfolding nonsense and which had already spead all of its new pale green miniature leaves and was getting on with colonising its little patch of bed.

How exciting…..  What will next week bring I wonder…..