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The wood fern seems ready too.

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Christmas Fern Spores Test 1.

Cinnamon Fern Spores

In preparation of trying to grow more cinnamon ferns I collected the spores back in May. I took two of the three fertile fronds off my 5 year old or so cinnamon fern. On a cinnamon fern the spores when ripe are green, once the spore fronds turn brownish-gold you're out of luck. I didn't store them in any complicated way as i was planning on sowing them fairly quickly. I just folded up the paper I had left the fronds on and taped it closed into an envelope. I stuck it to my fridge with a magnet, though my next set I'm probably not going to do that after my reading. I found a few fern books and at least two said osmunda spores don't store well long term, so I set them up a few weeks ago. I mostly followed the instructions in this book, Native Ferns, Moss, and Grasses. I consider it a companion to this book Wildflowers. Both are by the New England Wildflower Society, and I've found both quite useful. The fern book has a section in the back about how to grow from spores. The basics were everything needs to be clean, either clean with a 10 percent bleach solution, or use brand new. I went the brand new route. I bought 10 cheap 5 in x 5 in food containers and a box of freezer bags big enough to hold the containers. I filled them with a damp potting mix, mostly peat and microwaved them until the dirt hit at least 150 degrees F, but didn't go above 200 degrees F. That might not kill off everything, but I'm unwilling to cook the dirt in the oven for 2 hours to be that sure. Out of the microwave they went right into their own freezer bag and got sealed. I let them sit overnight to cool off, though the book said they could sit for an hour and should be cool enough then. The next morning I used a straw to sprinkle small amounts of spores evenly across the potting mix. Then I resealed the bags and stuck them under some fluorescent lights. As of today 3 out of the four have noticeable green fuzz which is the first step. I don't have a good magnifying glass, so can't be sure for a while, but it's looking good. Long term care was leave them in the bags for a few months, keeping them closed so no foreign contaminants can get in there. That is doubly important if you're trying to grow more than one type of fern because spores are very light, and ferns can crossbreed if you aren't careful. Just found a copy of the ferns from spores portion of the book I linked to above. link to NEWFS.

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Waiting impatiently for the spores to be ready on my many Christmas Ferns.

Cinnamon Ferns from Spores

So last year was the first time my cinnamon fern was large enough to grow fertile fronds, also known as the bit that got them the name cinnamon fern. Through light reading I found that if you want to harvest spores, you have to do so at the right time. I also thought that spores when they're ready were orangy colored. So last year I took the fronds off after they turned orange, and got nothing. This year I started earlier. Yesterday I poked one of this years fronds, and spores came right off. I pulled two of the three fronds I had and put then inside over white paper. this morning I have tons of green spores. I wasn't completely sure they were spores until I found this article Ferns. If you read through the entire thing you eventually get to spores being different colors, and the osmunda family having green spores, so if you wait until the fronds go gold you've missed them. If only I'd read it last year. Now I have to go cook some potting soil.