Louie

These sword fern fiddleheads cracked me up - they look like elephant trunks. Of course, it was raining yet again today . . .

Marjorie sent me this about an article online: “Native plants spring to life, just in time for celebration,” Seattle Times Mon. May 2. Here’s a  passage containing a wonderful term:

“Coarse and rough in its form, [the horsetail] was the perfect foil for the delicate curves of lady fern, just now in circinate vernation, the slow ballet of unfurling tightly coiled fronds. Like awakening sleepers, in the warming sun the fronds seemed to stretch their arms wider and raise their fiddleheads taller by the minute.” 

“Circinate,” according to Webster, means “rounded, coiled, esp. rolled in the form of a flat coil with the apex as a center ( ~ fern fronds unfolding).”

“Vernation” comes from the Latin vernatus, past participle of vernare, “to behave as in spring.” Leaving aside the question of what other spring behaviors might be observed in humans, I found this term applicable to my own behavior. In spring I begin to shake off S.A.D. and emerge from my shell like a hermit crab. As the nights get warmer, I tend to stop sleeping curled up, and my toes begin to reach for the foot of the bed.