Yesterday as I was walking through the bush collecting seeds, I was suddenly caught by a strange vine that ensnared my leg.
While it may look like your traditional vine, a climbing stem with many leaves attached, its a fern, and the entire "vine" is just one gigantic leaf stretching from the forest floor to the tree canopy.
Mangemange is a fern native to new Zealand. Its from the genus Lygodium.
Its stem (rhizome) grows along underground, almost like a long root. Every few meters a new leaf (frond) spouts from the rhizome.
The leaves emerge from the ground twisting and turning, desperately trying to find something to latch onto. At the same time pinnae form on the leaf stalk (rachis).
Pinnae look a bit like normal plant leaves but they are actually just leaf segments. The pinnae provide the energy for the frond to grow even longer.
Once a target tree is found, the frond starts wrapping around it, slowly climbing upwards, making new sets of pinnae every few meters.
Continuing climbing, the frond often reaches the forest canopy. Once in the canopy, fertile pinnae start growing and spores are produced. The spores are then carried away in the wind, to new lands unseen.
And once again a new mangmange can climb to the sky.
This is the first post in a series of posts, that I'm going to make about weird and wonderful ferns and fern allies. If you have any weird ferns (or weird fern allies) that you would like me to write about, feel free to suggest them. Or post your own or wonderful/weird ferns in this community!
Its outdoors, it can be to warm inside for these orchids to be happy