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Ferns for the Graceful Garden |
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Educational Presentations with Peter Loewer On the Green Road with Tosca and Forest The Botanical Gardens Smithsonian Archive of American Gardens |
Two hundred and fifty million years ago (give or take a few million), vast jungles of tree-sized club mosses, horsetails, and ferns covered much of the earth. The giant aspects of most such plants vanished with time, but in midsummer when walking through a shady woods, or a shady backyard, surrounded by the lacy growth of ferns, the jungle effect can be readily appreciated. Ferns do not bear flowers but reproduce with spores produced on the undersides of their leaves. These spores are part of a sexual history both complex and mysterious. When ripe, the spores fall to the earth, germinate, and grow into a flat, heart-shaped structure called a prothallium. Separate male and female organs grow on the prothallium underside and produce eggs and sperms. With water from dew, rain, or even snow, as a medium, the sperm swim to the egg and it's then fertilized. In a short time an embryo fern begins to develop. Their stems, called rhizomes, either creep along the ground or stay in one place to form a central crown that slowly increases in size.
The fern below is a bird's-nest fern, so named because its central crown resembles such a nest viewed from on high.
Drawings are from my book, Bringing the Outdoors In.
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Peter Loewer ~ The Wild Gardener ~ Asheville ~ NC ~ email The Wild Gardener |
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The three ferns pictured at left are, from the top: Fan maidenhair (Adenium tenerum 'Wrightii'), button fern (Pellaea rotundifolia), and the crisped blue fern (Polypodium aureum 'Mandaianum'), this last beauty having blades of a beautiful milky-blue. They are all tropical ferns and must spend the winter indoors if at that time of the year, you give up Trade Winds for bitter chills and snow!
The scientific name of this treasure is Asplenium nidus, and like many ferns it needs abundant moisture and misting. The blades can reach a three-foot height. Mine is growing in a self-watering pot. At one time it was difficult to expand a fern collection but today, thanks to many new nurseries and suppliers (plus contemporary shipping methods), getting a new fern is a cinch. Remember, most ferns like high humidity so if cacatuses (and their climates) are your thing try something else. If not, then one place to try is 