Ivydene Gardens Duckweed to Ferns Wild Flower Families Gallery:
Quillwort Family.

Click on Underlined Text in:-

Common Name to view that Plant Description Page
Botanical Name to link to Plant or Seed Supplier
Flowering Months to view photos
Habitat to view further Natural Habitat details and Botanical Society of the British Isles Distribution Map

Fern Ally: Quillwort Family:-

"Ferns and their allies are a very ancient order of flowerless plants, comprising the Ferns, Horsetails, Clubmosses and Quillworts, all perennial except for the rare Jersey Fern (Polypody Family). They have no seed, but reproduce themselves by minute dust-like spores. These are produced in tiny capsules (sporangia), and give rise without any sexual process to tiny short-lived plants called prothalli, which bear male and female organs and carry out the reproductive process in the presence of moisture and not by insect or wind fertilisation, leading to the formation of a new fern plant. This process is called alternation of generations. In the Ferns the prothalli are usually small green heart-shaped scale-like plants, 1/4 - 1/2 inch across, which may often be found in damp shady spots near fern colonies, sometimes with tiny fern plants growing from them.

The Mosses, Liverworts, Stoneworts (Chara and Nitella species), Algae, Seaweeds and other more primitive flowerless plants have only cellular and not fibrous or vascular tissue, and lack true roots and usually stems as well, but are sometimes very hard to distinguish except by a knowledge of their reproductive habits.

Quillworts are small tufted perennials with rather hollow, quill-like leaves, in whose broad flattened bases are either larger female or minute male spores.

" from Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers by David McClintock and R.S.R. Fitter assisted by Francis Rose - ISBN 0 00 219363 9 - Eleventh Impression 1978

Fern Ally: Quillwort Family plant table with its Common Name - Botanical Name. Flowering Months Range. Habitat with link to that Wild Flower Habitat Gallery:-

Common Name

Botanical Name

Flowering Months

Habitat

Common Quillwort

Isoetes lacustris

(Calamaria lacustris, Juncus bufonius, Isoetes macrospora, Isoetes rossica)

May-July

A submerged aquatic perennial found in oligotrophic lakes with a rocky or skeletal substrate. It frequently forms extensive lawns of many square metres at depths up to 2.5 m and rarely deeper (6 m in Loch Lundie, Westerness). Isoetes lacustris also occasionally colonises artificial reservoirs. 0-850 m (Carn nam Sac, S. Aberdeen).

Spore-case

Spore-cases

Foliage

Form

Sand Quillwort

(Land Quillwort)

Isoetes histrix

April-May

A small, summer-deciduous perennial, growing from a `corm`. It prefers skeletal acidic soils that are moist or flooded in winter but experience summer drought. A poor competitor, it is most frequent on pans of bare soil over South-facing rock outcrops, but also grows on erosion pans and footpaths. It sometimes occurs in short turf, and in dune-slacks in Guernsey. Lowland.

Spore-case

Spore-cases

Foliage

Form

Small Quillwort

(Spring Quillwort)

Isoetes echinospora

May-July

A submerged aquatic perennial usually found in nutrient-poor lakes over a wide range of substrates, from rocks and stones to silt and peat. It also grows in more mesotrophic water, such as coastal lakes enriched by wind-borne base salts, lowland reservoirs, slow-flowing rivers and flooded gravel- and clay-pits. It often grows with I. lacustris, and not infrequently hybridises with it. 0-500 m (Loch Callater, S. Aberdeen).

Spore-case

Spore-cases

Foliage

Form

THE QUILLS


            I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of polyploidy quills-
Beside the lake, beneath the foam 
Emerging from their watery home.

            Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way
They stretched a never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance...
As if in some hypnotic trance.

            The waves beside them danced but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee.
(Some botanist might want to play
In such a quillwort company.) 
With little spores in shallow graves,
The germlings tossed upon the waves.

            But I-when on my couch I lie,
Frustrated by this great duress,
They flash upon that inward eye-
A sign of psychiatric stress!
It's then my heart with anguish fills
And curses those damned little quills.


                    --William Wortsworth
 

Tommy Cooper statement:-

What do you call a fish with no eyes? A  fsh. 

Hide and Seek!!

Atlas of the flora of New England: Pteridophytes

Asplenium marinum poem:-

Mirrored in water

in the depth of the well

sea spleenworts

with sori oblique

fracture reflections

with fronded shadows.

Roots inextricable

from cracks

in stone.

Tommy Cooper statement:-

Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was  drinking battery acid, and the other was eating  fireworks.

They charged one and let the other one off.