specimen pressed
no. 06 · h-coll.
the fronds are thin, dark, almost black-green at the tip, paler and more translucent at the base where what little light it accepts finds it. it does not photosynthesise so much as remember how. one wonders, looking at it, whether it would prefer to be left alone.
it spreads slowly along the underside of stair-treads. takes decades to colonise a single cellar. neighbours of the basement often mistake it for damp until they look closely. tolerates silence better than any other plant in this collection. see also deeper, the well, and the green at the edge of the forest where the canopy thickens.
field note — i found one growing through the floorboards from below. i did not lift the board.