That fern fact from the natural history doc floored me

I was half-watching a show about ancient forests last Tuesday and they said ferns have been around for over 300 million years, basically since before the dinosaurs. That got me thinking about the fiddleheads I tried last spring at a farmer's market in Portland, Maine, and how they tasted like a mix of asparagus and grass. It hit me that I was eating something that survived ice ages and mass extinctions, just sitting there on my plate with some butter. Now I can't look at the bracken in my backyard the same way, it feels like a living fossil. I started reading about fern reproduction, the whole spore thing instead of seeds, and it blew my mind how different their whole life cycle is from my tomatoes. Has anyone else tried growing ferns from spores, or am I the only one who finds this ridiculously cool?

2 comments

2 Comments

faith_perez10d ago

Ugh, I gotta disagree with you there. I mean yeah, ferns are ancient and all that, but people act like it's some kinda miracle they're still around. They're basically the cockroaches of the plant world, they just found a niche and stuck with it. The spore thing is neat, sure, but it's also kind of a lazy way to reproduce. Think about it, they drop millions of spores and hope a few land somewhere decent, that's not impressive, that's just throwing stuff at the wall. Your tomatoes actually make a fruit with seeds that have a plan, a little food supply for the baby plant. Ferns are just survivors by sheer numbers, and I find that less cool and more like they cheated the system.

emeryn8310d ago

Those fiddleheads in Portland must have been something else, @faith_perez. I used to be on your side, honestly, thinking ferns were just lazy survivors, nothing special. But then I watched this bit on how some ferns can actually go dormant for years when the soil dries out, then pop back up like nothing happened. My tomatoes would just keel over and die in a week. So yeah, they throw a ton of spores around, but that's not dumb, that's a numbers game that's worked for 300 million years. I get your point about the fruit and the food supply, but a seed is basically a gamble too, just with better odds. Maybe we're both right, but I can't call them cheaters anymore when they've outlasted everything else in the yard.