Tiny Things

Would you have even noticed these? Are you an observant person? They are so tiny beneath your feet and your eyes are drawn towards the horizon, looking at the horizon you trample tiny treasures. My pics:

California Adders Tongue is a tiny and odd fern. Even in a very wet year each plant make one true leaf divided into two facing parts (sometimes just a single leaf blade grows) and a single fertile spike. So these here are full grown Ophioglossum californicum:








Another California native that produces but a single leaf from and underground caudex is Jepsonia parryi. It is cute to me but everyone else overlooks them.

The flowers appear before the plant puts up the one single leaf that it makes each year:








After blooming the single leaf emerges from the caudex:








So what is with these plants that only make on leaf per year? It is a condition called neoteny an interesting evolutionary strategy.



There are many many more tiny little things under your unseeing, oblivious, and clumsy feet.

Like fungi:







and liverworts: