We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am.
Last week we faced quite poor weather conditions for hiking. There had been a fair amount of rain for a few days and it seemed likely there would be a lot of water coming down over the Stromberg Falls, but this turned out to not be the case. The falls were more gentle than I expected with none of the roar and spray we sometimes see. Never mind, they were a nice treat for the hikers who had not visted the falls before. After that we drove quite some way up the road to a suitable place to park and hiked on from there. It was windy, cool and drizzly as we climbed higher and we had almost reached the Hydro Reactor Station by lunch time. A few patches of snow here and there gave the rocky landscape a wintery look and we sheltered from the gusty wind in the lee of a small cliff.
My photo this week is a very close shot of a very rare plant that is related to ferns, but not a true fern. Called Adder's Tongue Fern or Ophioglossum pusillum to the botanists, it's found here and there over quite a large area from Bell Farm south to Twin Peaks with quite a few colonies around Bobs Lake and Angel Lake. In this particular photo I was able to capture the brief time when the spores are released from the vertical reproductive part of this diminutive plant. The horizontal brown bars are the ripe spores. This is a red listed plant in BC meaning that it has a high high degree of legal protection.
JD.
A very close shot of an Adder's Tongue Fern showing the rows of ripe brown spores.
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