I woke up last Thursday morning to the sound of rain trickling down the gutters. At first I thought I was simply dreaming of rain, but it was truly the first fall precipitation and it restored my faith that this drought will end at some point. I dressed for the woods and ventured to Redwood Regional Park to introduce a class of Botany 1 students from Las Positas Community College to the redwoods and enlist their help collecting data for Fern Watch.

While we couldn’t detect an immediate change in the health of the fern from the brief overnight rain, we did notice how even the short storm wet the leaf litter covering the forest floor likely brought enough water to start quenching the forest’s thirst.

See how sword fern size at Redwood Regional compares to other coast redwood forests here.