Fern Cave National Wildlife Refuge and Related Topics

Map of Jackson County showing census subdivisions

Jackson County, Alabama

Northeasternmost county in the U.S. state of Alabama.

County Road 98 in northern Jackson County

Fern Cave National Wildlife Refuge

Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge

35,000 acre National Wildlife Refuge located along the Tennessee River near Decatur, Alabama.

Wheeler NWR is charged with the administration of four other National Wildlife Refuges including Fern Cave, Key Cave, Sauta Cave, and the Watercress Darter National Wildlife Refuge.

Paint Rock, Alabama

Town in Jackson County, Alabama, United States, along the Paint Rock River, and is included in the Huntsville-Decatur Combined Statistical Area.

The Fern Cave National Wildlife Refuge is located along the base of the Cumberland Plateau just east of Paint Rock.

Asplenium scolopendrium

Evergreen fern in the genus Asplenium native to the Northern Hemisphere.

<center>A cultivar with frilled frond margins.</center>

<center>A specimen growing in lime mortar on a wall.</center>

<center>Example of the North American variety.</center>

The variation americanum mostly grows along the Onondaga Limestone and Niagara Escarpment geological formations in Central New York (present in 2 counties), southern Ontario (present in 7 counties), and the eastern Upper Peninsula in Michigan (present in 2 counties). Exceptions are disjunct populations that exist in Alabama (in Fern Cave National Wildlife Refuge, a wildlife refuge centered around an off-limits cave in Jackson County, Alabama, where it has declined heavily due to illegal plant collecting, and an undisclosed pit in Morgan County that is also off-limits and protected), and Tennessee (in just a single county); these southern populations are at dire risk of extirpation. An introduced population descended from New York plants is found in New Jersey; it is a remnant of a 1936 effort to practice ex-situ conservation of populations in New York.