Mountain Spleenwort

I could fill post after post with images and impressions of the time I spent in the field with the Andrews Foray participants, but among the many things I documented, this one might just have been the most exciting. This is a rare fern (for Connecticut) called Mountain Spleenwort. It's on the State's Special Concern list, and while I don't know how many places it occurs within our borders, I do know that it was a genuine discovery for Lantern Hill, the area that we scoured for lichens and mosses. It was certainly a new fern for me. We found this growing in several cracks in a rock face just above a cave we'd noticed and decided to check out, and the plucky little masterpiece was quite green and hearty, despite the ongoing drought. Asplenium montanum must be a wizard in the water conservation department, with, no doubt, important lessons to teach about thriving in precipitation-challenged habitats.