Polypody helps your Body

With the dry weather the polypodies on this wall were shrivelled to curled up crisps. Wall livers, like those who sit on the fence, always have a hard time as they get flak from all directions. They are either being drenched with rain run-off or desiccating with wind and sun. Frosts hit them first and there’s no soil to speak of. However, polypodies are evergreens and so have the advantage of being able to photosynthesise non- stop and with super-sensitive sets of stomata, they can stem the loss of moisture through their fronds. With the weather now returning to Lakeland damp,  no doubt they will have bounced back to their normal selves next time I pass. Amazing!
 
As children we called them liquorice fern and would feel down a stem into the moss and with some grubbing around, could come up with a length of woody rhizome. Chewed, this did have a dominating stringent liquorice sweetness. All Sorts of other more earthy flavours were attached. 
Reading in Wikipedia just now though, those dried looking fronds are also edible, medicinally supposed to fight age-related diseases and speed up the re-generation of cells. Perhaps their constant see-sawing from wrinkled wizened-ness to water-plumped winsomness has something to do with it. They grow very commonly around here so it looks like I’ll have to start browsing on the whole plant. (And if it doesn't work I'll just say I'm temporarily in the wilt stage of the cycle.)