Year ‘round in RCT we are blessed with mild and wet weather. It may not be brilliant for growing roses, but our oceanic climate suits ferns down to the ground and even deeper. The shaded oak woods, humid streamsides and imperfect masonry of innumerable damp, north facing bridges and walls are superb fern habitats. The fern flora of Wales is renowned and we are fortunate to benefit from the luxuriance and understated beauty of these ancient plants.

Ferns come in many shapes and sizes. Bracken is familiar to everyone and large ferns such as male, lady and broad buckler fern are common features of woods, hedgebanks and disused railway-lines. I think most would recognise (if not name) hart’s-tongue ferns, but how many are aware of the wealth of urban ferns which share our towns and streets.

Make a cup of tea, kick-on your shoes and take a short walk up or down the garden path. Peruse your garden walls. Many of us have the diminutive wall rue and the pleasing maidenhair spleenwort, but how many support the easily identified rusty-back – so named for the profusion of red scales under each frond. Count-up the different ferns – how many do you have? Can anyone beat four species ?

Grasslands also have a few distinctive fern species. Adders-tongue with its single large oval leaf and distinctive fertile spike is a very uncommon and highly unusual fern of old, unimproved meadows. Moonwort is, if anything, even stranger and is certainly rarer. For the more adventurous, the cool, a shaded ledges of glacial cwms, disused quarries and scree banks support a different assemblage of ferns. Species such as the filmy-ferns, oak fern and hooker parsley-fern are to be found in a few favoured upland sites in the north of the County Borough. As species, which are more common in northern latitudes, some, such as mountain male-fern, even occur at their southernmost UK locality in the County Borough.

In RCT there is still much to learn about our native fern flora. With a little effort most ferns are easy to identify. The Victorians developed a particular passion for ferns, which has been largely lost. While television gardeners promote the use of Tasmanian tree ferns, plundered from doomed sub-tropical forests growing half a World away perhaps the time has come to recognise and appreciate our own rich fern heritage.