Asplenium Scolopendrium varieties

[KentGardener]

Hi All

gosh - this newlook forum will take me a while to get used to.

I am wondering if anyone has any interesting Scollies out there that they would be willing to swap / sell any offsets from.

with many thanks

John

[annew]

Yay! A fellow fernyholic! Show me yours and I'll show you mine.... seriously though, it's raining steadily here and I'm enjoying washing old wallpaper paste off my walls SO much, that I'll have to take photos later. Then all the non-fernyholics will probably think we're utterly mad.

[dan]

hi john from what i can remember long acre plants have a good selection of asplenium scolopendrium......you may already know this.....if not they havce a very good website 

[KentGardener]

Hi Anne and Dan

thank you for your replies. 

Dan - I think I have purchased all of the scollies that Longacre have (a great nursery indeed) - in fact I think I may have got all the plants that are available from all the nurseries that I know of.  This is why I have posted to this forum in the hope that some members may have plants that are not commercially available.

Anne - some pictures are attached (hopefully - if I can work out this new forum....).   The plants are not looking great at the moment as I have been looking after 2 cats for the last months and they have ripped many leaves when doing what cats do!  These photos are a few months old (I can post more next year if you think that the SRGC members would be interested?)  Are you Anne Wright as in 'the Wright way to sow fern spores'?  If so - I owe you thanks for teaching me how to have such high success rates.

So if any members have some harts tongue varieties that are not the easily available ones I would be very interested to hear from you.

with many thanks

John

[Maggi Young]

Hi, have you got a website url for Long Acre plants, please?

PS  John, You've made a good start to your posting inthe new forum, well done!

 I say, have you just added that ID photo while I was posting? I'm sure it wasn't there before!
Mind you, at this time of night I'm  not sure what I see, really, I just know that those glossy green ferns make me hungry ( daft, I know, but most things make me hungry, its my hobby).. that is, until I read about the cats!

[KentGardener]

Hi Maggi

the Longacre website is http://www.longacreplants.co.uk/

Ordering online can be a bit confusing - it tooks me a few wrong clicks before I worked it out.  Postage is £7 per order - but the plants are the best packaged of any nursery that I have ever purchased from.

No you are not suffering from sleep deprevation - I did add the profile photo about 5 minutes ago.

Now you've made me hungry too - just the mention of food.....

regards

John

[annew]

It's raining again today - yet another excuse for not taking photos! Yes those are our spore-sowing instructions, so if anyone would like a copy please email me. I for one (possibly the one of few) would like to see more ferns, but from experience they are not top of the forum's list of topics of interest! During the winter, ferns can bring a lot of foliage interest to the garden, and I promise to go out and take photos as soon as the weather improves, and I can commandeer the camera.

[dan]

  and i thought it was me just being stupid thinking the longacre website was confusing!

[KentGardener]

Hi dan

it is tricky isn't it!

For anyone wishing to order:

once you get the hang of it things are OK - but if you don't click in the correct order......

1)  goto www.longacreplants.co.uk
2)  then click on 'Click here to go to our online shop'
3)  then you have to click on 'shop' (this is the bit that took me ages to find....)
4)  then it should be straight forward

getting past stage 3 is what was most frustrating for me.

Hope this helps others as Longacre have got loads of excellent plants that are always top quality and well packaged.

cheers

John

[dan]

  yes i was exactly the same as you...maybe someone should e-mail them as they may be losing customers I think I visited the site about thre times before I worked it out and couldn't work out how to access  the shop and then one day I spotted it out of the corner of my eye. Problem solved!

[KentGardener]

Alright Dan

I did phone them last year to mention this to them - they seemed to think it was me being stupid and didn't see a problem.  Oh well.  I did try, honest.

cheers

John

[dan]

  evidently it is a problem...oh well it's their loss!

[Lesley Cox]

Maggi, did you realize that there are many ferns which are edible? The NZ Maoris know about them and use them in cooking and in medicines. Living here, it's a good plan to have some knowledge of which species are palatable as if lost in the bush, one can last out for many days on ferns and other edible species - if one knows which.

[KentGardener]

Hi Lesley

Just like fungi, some ferns are edible and some are very poisonous.

An example of a popular edible one is Matteuccia struthiopteris (the shuttlecock fern), sold pre-picked and packaged as 'fiddleheads' in America, proved free of poisons.

Whereas Bracken contains a rather nasty mix of carcinogens and in some cases cyanide.

I think I shall be sticking to cabbage and peas with my dinner...

John

[Maggi Young]

Lesley, I have munched on many a piece of Matteuccia struthiopteris ,it's one way to keep it in check!
You know me, I'm not backward in finding things to sniff and/or eat!!
I take your point, though, John, caution must be advised in such matters... there's no point in THINKING you know what you're eating, you have to REALLY KNOW!!
Enjoy your lunch!