I was hiking thru the woods a coupla days ago and was exploring an area I have only visited a once or twice, many years ago. I found a stand of Sensitive Fern that was 2.5 feet tall. Most of the other ones topped out at a foot at most. Found some other ferns (Lady or Wood Fern, not sure), clumps of Arrow Arums (Peltandra saggitaefolia) and a good number of "Devil's Bit" (Chamaelirium luteum); male and female plants).
The best part was finding this bottle containing a fern.
The best part of the fern in the bottle was the bottle itself. A vintage "painted" bottle from nearby Charlotte, NC.
Here's what it says on the back:
"Every day is party day when you serve Dixie Party. Take home an assorted case in economical family size quarts...Ginger Ale, Orange, Grape, Sparkling water."
The front has a "Southern Belle" complete with parasol and the caption:
"For every thirstful moment"
Sweet.
Robert.
PS I'll be removing the fern and keeping the bottle.
Too nifty for words! How will you get the fern out without hurting it?
That's such a great story, you should post it on the terrarium forum. I'm sure they would get a laugh, although they would probably want you to keep it in the bottle :)
http://davesgarden.com/forums/f/terrariums/all/
I'm just gonna pull.....the fern is so airy that I think a quick tug will free it. May need to get some of those long thin medical tweezers........It may be a little bruised from being freed, but it will recover and it needs soil now.
Wish me luck!
Robert.
A mini-greenhouse. Neat bottle and you must have a sharp eye.
Amazing find! A discarded bottle is always looked upon as a blot on the landscape. This little fern found refuge in it, it may not have grown if left to nature. What a treasure!
That is so neat!! Defintely a treasure!!!
What a fabulous find!! The message on the bottle makes it even better!
If you know someone with a serger they usually have a long tweezers to thread the machine.
Good luck getting it out.
I'd love to keep the fern in the bottle, but it's too big. :-(
If only I had found it sooner........I've been enjoying it, though.
wallaby~
I like the way you put it about that little fern finding refuge in the bottle. What odds that the two happened to meet.....there weren't many ferns in the area. Bless it's little heart, wending its way in there for some climate control. Looks like it just kept growing inwardly toward the body of the bottle and once there, flushed out.
I hope I can identify it. The glass is textured so it's hard to get a good look at the fern. I'll have to go back to where I found it and see what I can see.
Robert.
Robert, I wonder if you could add some compost to go around it's roots, then it might be happy and the fronds may find their way out of the neck, perhaps try to upright it with a poker of sorts, then stand the bottle up. The restrictions the bottle provides could keep it small.
You have a natural bottle garden, it almost seems a shame to separate them! I just thought, there may be more than one, it could be a whole tribe of spore in there with several growing together. If there weren't many ferns around it's not so likely though, but you have to have more than one spore for the male to swim to the female so it was clever!
wallaby1~
The idea of turning the bottle upright occured to me too! It might just be worth doing. The fern has sort of started growing side ways on its own, into the lateral space, instead of trying to continue strictly upright (which it can no longer do as it has reached the bottle side.)
Now that you have mentioned it, I might just have to do it! So what if I have to break the bottle or at least cut the end off it one day? I do like a vintage bottle, but I'm siding with the fern a touch more.
Robert.
A bottle is a bottle, man made, old yes but only a bottle. A fern has life, it struggled to grow in there, feel for the fern I say........it wants to live, but if it happens to grow too big I don't know if you could cut the top off the bottle without breaking it. Still, the fern could have a biggr pot!
I freed the fern yesteday. The bottle is now shards. I whacked it with a heavy trowel.
I'm calling it a "Dixie Party Fern" 'til I find out differently.
Looks like some form of Asplenium to me.
I'm thinking Asplenium trichomanes. the "Maidenhair Spleenwort".
How very appropriate, if it is, because of the Dixie Belle on the bottle!
Robert.
The fern won! Lovely one at that, it doesn't look to have suffered the transition at all.
It does have that Asplenium trichomanes look to it, I've got one at the top of a bank that's been there a few years, under the edge of the tree. The leaflets look a bit bigger to me, but cameras can do that.. I will have to take a pic.
Looking closely at mine they look very similar, but mine has slightly serrate edges. I can't see those on yours.
The shape of the pinnae looks slightly different to me, you can see the edges recurve slightly, that may be due to the spore foming on the backs. You can see where the spore makes in lines from the centre veins where the grooves are.
This looks like yours, I can see some serrate edges, I wonder if there are slight variations.
http://www.ct-botanical-society.org/ferns/aspleniumtric.html
Wow!! That whole thing was in that bottle???
Beautiful, thank you for setting it free...
Susan
=^..^=
Yes, the "Dixie Party Fern" is free, free, free at last!
The fern is in a 4 inch pot and the closeups make it look much larger; I got in really close!
I haven't looked very closely at the fern yet. I've had it in "intensive care" (an overturned aquarium where I nurse plants and cuttings and so forth) except briefly when I took it out to make the pix. I'll look more closely for serrated leaflets and fertile frons after the fern has adapted a bit to actually having soils around its roots.
Robert.
Robert,
Great find. What fun, a fern in a bottle. Glad you got it out and potted up. Sorry to hear you had to smash the bottle. The fern is lovely. Hope it acclimates quickly to it's new environment.
Well, I considered cutting the bottom off the bottle and slipping the fern out and saving the bottle as a keepsake but on impulse I just smashed it. Now the bottle exists only in photographs, but the fern lives on.
The fern seem to be perking up a little, I think there's some new green showing. I've taken it out of "ICU" and have it under a tree in bright shade.
Thanks for your encouragement.
Robert.
Robert,
Glad to hear it is perking up a bit and came out of ICU. Good sign.
I lost some of mine in the hostpital,,, :o{
