🌿🤷‍♂️ I am not entirely sure which ferns I photographed here. Entering the dunes is prohibited, so I could only take close-up shots of the individuals at the edge of the path. The close-ups are probably of broad buckler-fern (Dryopteris dilatata). The last photo with the small mini ferns shows the unmistakable common polypody (Polypodium vulgare).

📖 The following fern species live on Baltrum:

🌿 Lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina)

🌿 Narrow buckler-fern (Dryopteris carthusiana)

🌿 Broad buckler-fern (Dryopteris dilatata)

🌿 Male fern (Dryopteris filix-mas)

🌿 Oak fern (Gymnocarpium dryopteris)

🌿 Royal fern (Osmunda regalis)

🌿 Common polypody (Polypodium vulgare)

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🪸 In my hand, I’m holding a piece of bladderwrack (Fucus vesiculosus), a seaweed commonly found along the Wadden Sea coast. The small, round bladders are not fruits but flotation organs. They help the seaweed stand upright in the water so its flat fronds can catch as much sunlight as possible. This is essential for photosynthesis – the process of turning light energy into nutrients.

🌊🫧 The bladders are filled with a mixture of gases. This is mainly oxygen, which the seaweed produces during photosynthesis, and nitrogen, which diffuses in from the surrounding seawater. Carbon dioxide, which the seaweed needs to grow, is almost absent because it is used up immediately. Thanks to this high oxygen content, the bladders provide enough buoyancy to keep the seaweed floating, allowing it to capture as much light as possible even at high tide or in murky waters.

🧫🔬 From a biological point of view, Fucus vesiculosus is a brown alga. It belongs to a group called the Fucales within the family Fucaceae. Even though it looks like a plant and makes its own food through photosynthesis, it is classified in a broader group called Stramenopiles, which also includes diatoms (tiny plankton) and some organisms that don’t photosynthesise at all. How exactly brown algae fit into the tree of life is still being studied, and researchers continue to discuss their relationship to other algae and to the ancestors of land plants.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

Fungi, algae and moss 🍄‍🟫🦠✨️

⛰️ Moss and lichen carpet in the Baltrum grey dunes

🔍 Cladonia portentosa is a shrub-like lichen whose main body consists of fungal tissue. It is one of Germany’s specially protected reindeer lichens. Lichens are always in a symbiotic relationship with algae or cyanobacteria. In a thin layer within the thallus – the body of a lichen – tiny green algae (mostly Trebouxia species) carry out photosynthesis, supplying the fungus with nutrients. In return, the fungus protects the algae from drying out and provides them with a habitat – a partnership that enables survival in the dry, nutrient-poor dunes.

🌍 Here, the lichens often grow alongside heath star moss (Campylopus introflexus). This moss is not native to Baltrum but originates from the Southern Hemisphere (southern South America, South Africa, southern Australia, New Zealand). Since 1975, however, it has spread widely and is now the dominant moss species on the island. Together, moss and lichens form a resilient ground cover that anchors the dune sand and, in many places, shapes the characteristic appearance of the island’s grey dunes.

🍄‍🟫 A single mushroom

🏐 In the last picture, I show a mosaic puffball (Handkea utriformis, also known as Lycoperdon utriforme, Lycoperdon caelatum, or Calvatia utriformis). This species is common across the northern temperate zones and is typically found growing alone or in small clusters. It prefers sandy, open grasslands or heathlands and is often encountered in coastal areas. The fruiting bodies usually appear from summer into late autumn.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🤔 What do you think I’m holding in my hand?

🔍 If you’re thinking of a seaweed, you’re already halfway there! But apart from its branching structure, there’s not much of the seaweed left to see. That’s because it has been colonized and completely covered by a colony of tiny animals! These are moss animals (bryozoans), more specifically Electra pilosa.

🏘🦠 Moss animals usually form colonies (zoaria) made up of many individual animals (zooids). Each zooid consists of a soft body and a protective shell.

🪸🤝🪸 Within colonies, there is a division of labor. Strongly reduced individuals form stalk segments, tendrils, or root-like filaments. Other zooids produce reproductive cells – still others become "nurse" zooids or develop into bird’s-head-shaped avicularia or vibracularia, which prevent other organisms from settling on the colony. In these specialized zooids, both the tentacle crown and usually the gut are reduced.

🏡🦠 In short: the seaweed is mainly just living space for Electra pilosa, not a partner. For the seaweed itself, it is usually more of a burden than a benefit.

⛴️🪸 Moss animals can cause damage or maintenance costs to ships, harbor structures, and water management facilities through heavy growth.

💉🧫 On the other hand, they produce chemical compounds that are the subject of medical research, including the potential anti-cancer agent bryostatin 1.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🦪🐌 Mollusks on Baltrum

🌊 On the beach of Baltrum, you can find many shells of mussels and snails from various species. These accumulations of washed-up shells — a phenomenon known in German as Schill — are a common sight along the shoreline. When swimming in the North Sea, you often have to cross a layer of these sharp shells before the water is deep enough to swim (I did it despite the low temperatures in May).

🦪 Here we see Atlantic jackknife clam (Ensis leei), common cockles (Cerastoderma edule), prickly cockles (Acanthocardia echinata), and many other species.

🦪 In the second picture, I’m holding a European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis) in my hand. Mussels play an important role in cleaning the oceans, as they filter pollutants from the water. They also form mussel beds, which serve as habitats and function similarly to coral reefs.

🐚 In the third picture, there is an old common whelk shell (Buccinum undatum). These are relatively rare to find because their populations have declined and because hermit crabs prefer exactly this type of shell, often taking them before they can be washed ashore.

🐌 At the groynes – that's the name for the wave breakers made of wooden posts and stones – you can find the common periwinkle (Littorina littorea). In the photo it's on a wooden post, in the video on a stone groyne.

🐌 There are also land snails on Baltrum. I saw the garden banded snail (Cepaea hortensis, on the rose) and the grove snail (Cepaea nemoralis, on the paved path). You can tell them apart by the lip of the shell: Cepaea hortensis has a light edge at the shell opening, while Cepaea nemoralis has a dark one.

🤪 In the last picture, I show you a land slug (Arion species) cheekily smiling into the camera.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

Insects also feel at home on Baltrum 😊

🪲 I encountered the mottled dingy-brown click beetle (Agrypnus murinus) quite frequently. Of course, it also showed me what lies beneath its beautiful wings! The adult beetles feed on grasses and leaves, while the larvae are predatory.

🪲 The dune darkling beetle (Phylan gibbus) is a relative of the mealworm beetle (Tenebrio molitor). This small black beetle inhabits the coastal dunes (grey dunes) from Spain to southern Norway and is a flightless omnivore.

🪲 On the campsite, thousands of amorous garden chafers (Phyllopertha horticola) were buzzing around. They find exactly what they need, as they feed on oak and birch leaves as well as rose blossoms. These plants are very common on Baltrum.

🪲 The alder leaf beetle (Agelastica alni) also finds plenty of suitable food on Baltrum. Although it primarily feeds on the leaves of alders (Alnus), it also eats the leaves of creeping willows (Salix repens) and downy birches (Betula pubescens), which are common on the small island, and occasionally those of bird cherries (Prunus padus).

🦋 The red admiral (Vanessa atalanta) is a strikingly large migratory butterfly. Here it is feeding on the blossoms of a bird cherry (Prunus padus).

🦋 Blue like the sky is the common blue butterfly (Polyommatus icarus). It's quite cute. It finds plenty of flowers on Baltrum, for example clover and thistles. I encountered this one on a salt meadow.

🪰 Flies are, of course, native to Baltrum as well. I believe the small fly on the dog rose (Rosa canina) is a species of Phaonia. However, it is not easy to say for sure.

🪰 The large blowfly on the windowpane is probably a Calliphora vicina, at least the brown mandible area suggests so. It finds many bird and rabbit carcasses on the island for its larvae – of which I have seen quite a few.

🐝 On a common bugloss (Anchusa officinalis), I saw a buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) climbing from flower to flower. Was its rear already too fat to fly?

🍯 I also spotted honeybees (Apis mellifera). Of course, people on Baltrum don’t want to do without their own honey.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🦀 The crustaceans of Baltrum

Barnacles are marine crustaceans that, as adults, have a very different appearance from the classic crustacean. In the past, some were wrongly classified as mussels, even though they are not related to molluscs. Their larvae are free-swimming and visually resemble typical crustaceans. The species pictured originally comes from the waters around Australia and New Zealand, but has also appeared in the North Sea since the 1940s and has been multiplying rapidly ever since.

Sand hoppers (Talitrus saltator) are more clearly recognizable as crustaceans. They hop around on the sand, feeding on all sorts of organic matter. While I was taking the video, one nibbled on my hand, but I still managed to keep the camera relatively still.

The common pill bug (Armadillidium vulgare) is a woodlouse with a worldwide distribution. It's very common on Baltrum, and as a child, I enjoyed watching and making them roll up into a ball by touch. Not everyone knows that woodlice are crustaceans.

The shore crab (Carcinus maenas) is probably the most clearly identifiable crustacean. Its lateral locomotion evolved because it allows it to move more easily with its broad body. Firstly, it fits better through narrow spaces, and secondly, its body offers less resistance to water movement. In the video, you can see sand hoppers searching for organic materials on and around the crab.

The common hermit crab (Pagurus bernhardus) is another crustacean that requires a closer look. It lives in a snail shell. When the tide recedes, hermit crabs and shore crabs either try to follow the water or burrow into the wet sand to survive until high tide.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🌊🌾 The sea gives. The sea takes. It's in its nature. Wave by wave, it carries away what once was, and brings something new to shore elsewhere.

❤️‍🔥🧠 Memories settle within me too – not always willingly, not always welcome. Beautiful things buried beneath pain. Pain laced with beauty. What belongs to me mixes with what I had to let go of.

🪾🌱 I can't hold on to what is in motion. But I can acknowledge that loss also shapes. That what was taken from me creates space for something else. And that some things I thought were broken are part of something greater.

⏳️🌓 The hourglass of the tides doesn’t stand still. And while the sand trickles down, something grows beneath the surface: not the old, not the same, but something of its own.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

🌊🌾 A mere heap of sand is nothing enduring. No memory – only wind, rain, and tides carry it onward. For something to remain, it needs life that grasps it, holds it, gathers it – like the marram grass that forms the first embryonic dunes. The birth of new life, when the horizon rises and is eventually crowned with white dunes. From up there, one can see far and wide how life and death make fertile land thrive. The dunes turn grey, then brown, and the diversity of life marks each of these hills that, without an initial impulse, would never have been more than a fleeting mineral in the wind.

🌲🌳 Amid shrubs, pines, and bog birch forests, one quickly forgets that all this soil was washed ashore by the sea and carried to this place by the wind. One looks out over endless salt marshes, over reeds and the Wadden Sea, whose tidal creeks meander deep into the newly formed land. And far on the horizon, on the other side beyond the dunes, one sees a solitary hill – a warft – where humans made this world their own, found refuge, and fed their livestock on the salty meadows.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.

A pleasant variation! 😊🌾🌼

🌳🌾🍎🏡 Right in the heart of Germany lies a hidden dune landscape. It’s a striking and unexpected contrast to the typical surroundings of meadows, forests, fields, and traditional orchard grasslands.

🧭🦬🌬 The Schwanheim Dune is a remarkable natural monument in the western part of Frankfurt am Main. It was formed around 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age, when strong winds blew sand from the dried-out bed of the River Main and piled it into dunes. Such inland dunes, located far from any coastline, are rare – unlike the more common coastal dunes found in northern Germany.

🌲🪵🏰 Originally, the dune was covered by forest, but in the Middle Ages, large areas were cleared for farming and intensively logged for timber. As a result, the sandy soil was exposed to wind and erosion. Without protective vegetation, the sand began to drift and posed a threat to nearby settlements and farmland. To stabilize the area, pine trees were planted – many of which still shape parts of the landscape today.

🌾🦟🌿 Despite these changes, a portion of the open sandy terrain remained – providing habitat for rare, specialized plants and animals adapted to dry, nutrient-poor conditions. Today, the Schwanheim Dune is a protected natural area and a valuable ecological refuge.

🌼🌸🏵 Walking along the boardwalk, I came across beautiful wildflowers such as St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare), and the evening-primrose (Oenothera biennis). Grey hair-grass (Corynephorus canescens) is also typical of this dry dune environment. While it is widespread in the many dune landscapes of northern Germany, the species is considered endangered in the state of Hesse.

🤗 For a more nuanced discussion, please feel free to use the comments section, private messages or the anonymous contact form on my website.