File:Hard Fern (Blechnum spicant) - geograph.org.uk - 1019815.jpg

English: Hard Fern (Blechnum spicant). The northern side of Meikle White Hill was abundant in this species, which produces two kinds of fronds: evergreen sterile ones (which are the most numerous in this photograph), and upright, more sparsely-lobed fertile fronds (resembling fishbones), which die back in winter.

According to "A Natural History of Britain's Ferns" (Christopher N. Page), Hard Fern "is one of the most regularly occurring smaller ferns of heathland communities in all the wetter climates of Britain and Ireland. Spreading clumps of this fern are generally very widespread amongst Heather in many areas of heathland, but especially so on damp valley sides in upland moorland in wetter western districts" (p284). The fern's presence here is "probably indicative of areas of a lateral and descending movement of fairly acidic groundwater" (p200).

The ferns shown here were located on a damp, windswept hillside, a habitat to which they are suited (the work just quoted notes that this fern has a "rather flat, vegetative frond profile which is relatively little disturbed by the wind"). The area is one of acidic heathland and abundant water; note, for example, the stream flowing past the foot of the same hillside: 1019803.