Tag Archives: Ostrich Fern

Edimentals in Stanley Park, Vancouver

I took the ferry across from Vancouver Island to  the city of Vancouver. I’ve already posted a lot of pictures of the birds of fabulous Stanley Park, a green lung right in the centre of the city  (see http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=10476). Here’s a few pictures of emerging edimentals I spotted in the park during my visit on 4th April 2017.

Perennial vegetables and edimentals for cities

This week I gave a couple of talks for the first time  on the subject of “Perennials: Attractive and climate friendly city vegetables” ….covering everywhere from roof gardens to shady backyards to city farms, including Slottsparken – the park around the Royal Palace in Oslo which is in reality a productive forest garden ;) (full of Hosta and ostrich fern / strutseving)!

30 point ostrich!

On the way up the mountain at Alvastien Telste I found a particularly fertile ostrich fern with 30 fertile fronds! This is the edible wild plant equivalent of a moose with antlers with many points ;)
These much shorter fronds which carry the spores are one of the most important distinguishing features of ostrich fern (the taller fronds don’t have spores).

Perennialen III: Alvastien Telste – from fjord to shieling

Documentation of yet another amazing day during last week’s Perennialen III in Hardanger!! Pictures taken on a fantastic 6-7 hour round trip from Eirik Lillebøe Wiken​ and Hege Iren Aasdal Wiken​’s house to their shieling (støl or seter in Norwegian). We took our time botanising on the way up, passing through different types of forest on the way up, from alder (or), ash (ask), planted spruce (gran), lime (lind), elm (alm), hazel (hassel), aspen (osp) and birch (bjørk) at the highest levels. Lower down, old apple trees witnessed that these steep slopes had at one time been worked for fruit production, no easy matter….
Eirik and Hege are planning to rejuvenate and replant some of this area and have planted a multispecies forest garden above and below the house, probably one of the most dramatic forest gardens in the world (more later).

Ostrich Fern (strutseving)

Ants on pine tree

Aspen (osp) and the fjord

Young blackcap (munk)

Ramslia

My second unsuccessful attempt to find ramsons (ramsløk) at its northernmost natural site at Ramslia in Nord Trøndelag (on the other side of Trondheimsfjord from my place). Neverthless, it was a great day out with one of my ex-OCEANOR work colleagues Jarle Tronstad who owns an old mountain farm in the area!

Homla walk 2nd June 2017

Another magical walk along the Homla Canyon in Malvik in the company of wwoofer of the week :)  First, a parade of Ostrich Ferns along the bank of the Homla river

A dipper (fossekall), Norway’s national bird flew past us singing as it flew and landed conveniently on some rocks 50m upstream:

 

Homla ostrich fern tour; 17th May 2017

Yet another wondrous walk along the Homla canyon in Malvik , this time with Berit Børte, Marit By and Ane Mari Aakernes