MEETING REPORT: Jon Rebman's Ferns and Lycophytes of San Diego County, October 2026
Many thanks are in order for Jon Rebman's ongoing generosity with his profound expertise related to the flora of San Diego County and Baja California! At our October meeting, Jon toured us through the natural history and rich current diversity of plants native to our region which grow from spores rather than seeds.
There was a time when plants had not yet developed seeds, which, as we learned, meant they had a much more immediate and integral relationship with available water. although seed producing and then flowering plants have since become the dominant green things in the world around us, the audience was pleasantly surprised to learn just how diverse ferns and their "allies" such as lycophytes are in San Diego. Although counterintuitive, as Jon highlighted, it adheres to the pattern of San Diego being the most richly diverse county in the entire continental U.S. Still, many were surprised to learn that so many kinds of ferns and lycophytes could be indigenous to a region famed for being hot and dry.
Having our eyes opened through an experience like this presentation will change the way that we look at things we otherwise thought we knew. Is that little, green residue on the shady side of a trail a moss? A lycophyte? Could it be the exceedingly small fern, Ophioglossum californicum?!
Leading into this meeting, many of our members would have immediately associated ferns with very wet, if not actually tropical places. Revelations abounded as Jon strategically introduced us to otherwise complex and esoteric topics such as phylogenetics, the alternating sporophyte/gametophyte lifecycle of plants, and how ferns can possible survive in places as challenging as even Anza Borrego Desert!
If ever you get the chance to hear Jon Rebman speak, you should clamor for such a fun and informative experience and I can promise we will be asking him back whenever he puts out the next of his many beautiful books.
Thanks again to everybody involved,
Tony Gurnoe
