Quartet
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This grouping of stones capped with colonies of Polypodium vulgare was inspired by the tenacity of this epiphytic fern growing on all manner of surfaces in the Southwest of England. This may be the common polypody fern, but I am in admiration of it as much as Ursula Buchan, who writes about it in The Telegraph, 2004:
“There is a truly remarkable plant in my garden. It grows on top of a dry-stone wall, with nothing more nutritious to feed on than limestone dust. Shrivelled to a crisp in early summer, it recovers by autumn and in dark winter is as green and blithe as a schoolboy in love. This paragon is the common polypody or Polypodium vulgare. It is so disregarded by the bien-pensant that it's hard to find it mentioned in books, yet this is a plant that gives me daily pleasure”.


