Cinnamon Fern Traditional Cache

Cinnamon Fern

This is in what I refer to as Lemon Bay park annex. To get there you follow the inside of the north fence towards the water. What used to be overgrown mud is now a cleared path and plank bridges. See the bottom of the page for the shortcut from Bay Shore Dr.

Osmunda cinnamomea

Common Names: cinnamon fern

Family: Osmundaceae (cinnamon fern Family)

Cinnamon fern, Osmunda cinnamomea, is a common fern that grows naturally in moist habitats such as wet woods, the shores of lakes and rivers, and in bogs and swamps from South America through Central America, north through New Mexico, Texas and Florida, and on to Minnesota and southern New England. The species also occurs naturally in eastern Asia.

The cinnamon fern's fertile fronds support numerous sporangia from which spores are released at maturity in late summer.

Cinnamon fern grows like a big shuttlecock from the ascending tips of thick, creeping semiwoody rhizomes. Most ferns carry their reproductive spores on the undersides of the fronds; cinnamon fern (and other species of Osmunda) have separate and distinctive fertile fronds in addition to the typical sterile fronds. The large sterile fronds grow 3-5 ft (1.2-1.5 m) tall. They are pinnately compound with each of the 30-50 pinnae divided again. At first the fiddleheads are cinnamon brown and covered with a dense wooly pubescence, but the fronds turn pale green as they unfold and mature. Later in the year, they turn golden brown before dying back in winter. The fertile fronds, which lack leafy pinnae, emerge in spring from the center of the plant, standing a little above the vaselike cluster of sterile fronds. They are green at first but soon turn rich cinnamon brown. Fertile fronds are covered with abundant masses of brownish sporangia. The fertile fronds die back after shedding their spores in late summer. The roots of cinnamon fern are black, wiry and fibrous, eventually forming a tough, thick mat. Cinnamon fern is readily identified by the distinctive cinnamon colored non-leafy fertile fronds, or if fertile fronds are absent, by the presence of a conspicuous tuft of orange hairs on the underside of each pinna at its base.

American Indians used a decoction of cinnamon fern to treat rheumatism, headache, chills, colds and snakebite. Frond tips were eaten both raw and cooked. The fiddleheads are edible, and said to taste like a blend of broccoli,

The cache is a tied in, small, camoed pill bottle that is a bit tricky to open: you have to have the arrow on the lid pointing to the arrow on the bottle, then pop the protrusion on the lid. Usual contents: rolled log, rubber band and zip lock plastic bag. Please make sure it stays tied in.

From Bay Shore drive, which goes off Old Englewood Rd, you may be able to park on the grass at N 26 59.158 W 082 23.064. That would save you a good bit of walking through Lemon Bay park.