Moonwort / Botrychium lunaria

A few of us were very lucky yesterday, to see this very small Moonwort fern on Plateau Mountain. I think it was two years ago, that a Moonwort fern was found on a Plateau Mountain trip and I was lucky enough to be on that trip, too. Not easy to come across one single, small plant amongst all the other greenery.

"Botrychium lunaria is a species of fern known by the common name common moonwort. It is the most widely distributed moonwort, growing throughout the Northern Hemisphere across Eurasia and from Alaska to Greenland, as well as parts of the Southern Hemisphere including South America and Australia. This is a small plant growing from an underground caudex and sending one fleshy, dark green leaf above the surface of the ground. The leaf is 6 to 10 centimeters tall and is divided into a sterile and a fertile part. The sterile part of the leaf has 4 to 9 pairs of fan-shaped leaflets. The fertile part of the leaf is very different in shape, with rounded, grapelike clusters of sporangia by which it reproduces." From Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botrychium_lunaria