Ferns Forever

Ferns evolved 360 million years ago when the supercontinent Pangaea still existed. They are one of earth's most ancient plants and predated dinosaurs, mammals and flowering plants by over 120 million years. Once plant-eating dinosaurs evolved, ferns were their main meal. Luckily for the dinosaurs, ancient ferns were bigger than bite-sized; many species grew over 100 feet tall!

Ferns are vascular, which means they have internal vessels through which they pump water and nutrients. Vascular plants can grow tall, unlike nonvascular plants such as mosses, which can only grow an inch or two above the ground.

Ferns are considered non-flowering plants because they reproduce via tiny spores. Spores develop in sporangia – those odd little bumps lined up along the bottom side of a fern frond. Successful spore reproduction requires water, so in Montana ferns must live in moist locations such as ravines, rock crevices and bogs.

Not only ancient herbivores craved ferns. From 1880 to 1900, an odd fern craze consumed English city dwellers, earning it the name Pteridomania, which referred to Pteridophyta, the division of plants to which ferns belong. People from cities flocked to the country to collect ferns, sometimes stripping areas bare. For that short period of time fern themes dominated art, literature and landscaping.

Living ferns captured NASA's attention after scientists discovered ferns could filter benzene, formaldehyde and trichloroethylene out of the air in space stations. And since ferns are nitrogen fixers, rice farmers use them as natural fertilizer in their rice paddies.

On a more poetic side of things, in Slavic folklore, if you ever see a "fern flower" you will be happy and rich for the rest of your life. And Finnish folklore claims that if you find the "seed" of a fern in bloom on a midsummer's night, you will be able to invisibly travel to a place where eternally blazing Will o' the wisps mark where hidden treasure lies. Since you can't really see fern spores and can barely see their tiny reproductive structures, you would indeed have special powers if you found a "fern flower."

Our entire industrial, internal-combustion-engine existence depends in part upon the decomposed bodies of ancient fern forests. It's strange to think that an ecosystem's demise is what fuels our current lifestyle. In the face of all the environmental challenges we currently face, perhaps ferns will prevail. I, myself, would bank on it.

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