Fern flowering in the fern garden

Lovely, I have Royal Fern too :-)

That's a beautiful combination.

Dawn could not remember the name and it is difficult to find the labels this time of year even though they are 8in slate ones.

Haha Brian, your garden sounds like its very lush.
I had a shuttlecock fern Matteuccia struthiopteris too but that seems to have vanished.

Dawn
thought that shuttlecock should grow anywhere however I purchased 3 of them from the RHS shop early in 2012 and as yet they have never grown more than 12/15 inches high gave them a space of there own as pictures show them spreading, really should read there requirements.

I did not know that ferns flowered. I thought the seeds came from the backs of the leaves. Goy gives us a wonderful education. Thank you for posting this one.

I though the shuttlecock ferns got massive too, maybe mine are still around, I put them on the pond bank in the shade so should have been happy but probably got a bit swamped by the Lychnis.

So did I mine are in reasonably damp shade.

Sheila only a few flower most are spores on the leaves.

and these flowers show how they are modified leaves anyway :o)

My original shuttlecock is in a shady corner, but I have three self-seeded ones, on the other side of the garden, and they are in full sun, so I don't know what they like best... They are all huge, and seed all over the place.

What an amazing history this plant has. I googled it and found out some more about it on this link. http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/regalis.html.

Seaburngirl not thought of them as modified leave but yes exactly what they look like

apart from white flowers every petal can photosynthesise. I remember doing chlorophyll/pigment chromatograms of a range of different flower colours to see what was in them. They all had chlorophyll in them except for the white ones. totally pigment free.

Bit more I have learnt.

You should take a look at the link I found Bjs. You would love the history lesson.