Not more than two and a half months have gone since I first saw these little ferns, Gymnocarpium dryopteris, unfolding their leaves like petals of flowers, with such a tender green to be almost impossible to catch on picture; like wings of just hatched butterflies which are filling with air, lying in thousands under the protective watch of pines and birches, drawing a living carpet that seemed to swarm though it was completely still, or, at least, barely stirred by a puff of forest breeze. Now, twelve weeks later – a time which in other species might mean a gestation, not a whole life - here they are giving up, shrinking, turning brown, standing in colors from the blanket of moss that grew after them, and under them; it being still green indeed, as if it is sucking their hue from below, and the life force with it. Autumn comes soon in the North, and by what a mountain of trivialities I could muddy this space on such a subject, that I'll leave to you to imagine; and I refrain from doing so. Parasoll mossa is its Swedish name, and once established that mossa means “moss”, doesn't require much explanation the Parasoll part, due to its shape. Splachnum luteum, its scientific name, thrives in moist boreal forests, raising in summer this structure around one centimeter wide. To make it simple, I've always called it a “flower”, when met it along with friends or visitors, but it isn't. Being that plant a moss (a peat moss , to be precise), these small, vaguely mammary coins are actually sporangia, organs which contain the reproductive spores in fungi, mosses and ferns. Usually tiny and humble, in this case they assume quite a floral appearance... A coincidence? There's basically not such a thing in Nature, where everything has a specific reason to exist. The Yellow Moosedung Moss, as it's called following its preferred thriving “ground”, exploits insects to spread, and therefore needs a showy and irresistible appeal in order to make them to alight on itself, and then to fly away with the spores stuck to their body. This is exactly what it happen with “regular” flowers, bees, pollen etc.: it's called parallel evolution, when different organisms develop similar structures to perform the same tasks. |
All site contents are: © Vitantonio Dell'Orto, all rights reserved worldwide. The Chronicles of Särna, and other stories from the North.
I live in Sweden, in Särna (Dalarna). The Chronicles are a photo diary about the nature (but not just) here around and from all the Scandinavian areas where my photo job takes me.
My book: "My Sweden - Tales from an Italian photographer in the North" is available in the bookstores and by the publisher.
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