Welcome to the 9th edition of Berry Go Round, your favorite botanical carnival!  This is my very first carnival hosting experience, so I hope you like it!

I’m taking a plant morphology class this semester, and my professor has me a bit wary about the looming section on ferns with statements like “if you think this is complicated, just wait until we get to ferns.”  Christopher Taylor over at Catalogue of Organisms has a great post up on the details of a fern life cycle that I will certainly be referring back to!  Did you know that the “normal” fern plant with two sets of chromosomes develops from a totally different looking fern plant with just one set of chromosomes?  Luckily, the panic induced by trying to figure such crazy things out is greatly reduced by actually looking at ferns.  Emily has many incredible pictures of ferns at her blog, No seeds, no fruits, no flowers: no problem, like this lovely fertile frond of Blechnum spicant.

Mary has another very informative post up, this time about the Verbena Family.  Since I have a special place in my heart for plants with angular stems, I particularly enjoyed this post.  Who needs a plant taxonomy class when you can just read A Neotropical Savanna?

At botanizing, we are treated to a beautiful post that may cause you to take a closer look at inconspicuous orchids.

Botany Photo of the Day recently profiled the somewhat mysterious Jovellana punctata, which I promptly fell in love with (don’t worry, there’s no bad poetry hiding behind that link).

Matt Mattus at Growing with Plants shares several gorgeous fall blooming plants and his enviable tomato harvest.  If you aren’t jealous, don’t tell me.  I don’t want to hear about how easy it is to grow tomatoes when you don’t live in the desert.

Seeds Aside regales us with the history of tomatillos, which he refers to as miltomate.  In northern Arizona, we’ve already had a few close calls with frost this year.  I’m hoping the tomatillos from our garden fill out before the first hard freeze.  I’m pretty jealous of the bounty from verdure’s garden.

And speaking of gardens, GrrlScientist and the very respectable Professor Steve present their recent trip to Darwin’s garden.  There are some absolutely gorgeous flower photos, so make sure you go check it out.

Thanks to everyone who submitted to this edition!  I’m not sure where the next Berry Go Round will be hosted, so while I do some sleuthing, go check out last month’s edition over at Not Exactly Rocket Science and don’t forget to submit entries for October’s Berry Go Round, which will be hosted at Catalogue of Organisms.