A fern by any other name . . . . . .

All white this morning, but the snow began to melt as the rain moved in. Light rain, but by mid-afternoon we're back to the usual wet and windy!

Spent a large part of the day on Photo Club business. I've lost count of the number of times I've tried to explain how to size images correctly for the competitions, but there's always someone who sends the images in at the last minute wrongly sized!

I took the opportunity of a lull in the wind and a gap in the rain to go for a quick walk round the streets. Couldn't find anything to photograph, so this is a fern in my garden. It may look like some common old fern, but it's actually Todea barbara, a fern native to SE Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It's come through the cold weeks this winter with no sign of any damage. It has a number of common names - King Fern, Austral King Fern, Dwarf King Fern, Todea King Fern, Crape Fern, Hard Todea, Todea Fern and probably others! This is why I stick to Latin names! It can grow to quite a large size - there's a specimen in the fernery at Ascog on the Isle of Bute with a very large rhizome, almost like a large rock, and said to be 1,000 years old.