Ferns, denizens of the gloom.

They thrive in dark, dank places and they appear without seeds as if by magic, ferns are the stuff of mythology. The unearthly way the fronds unroll from a clenched fist only adds to their mystique.

Ferns have been around longer than any flowering plants. Some modern species have remained unchanged since their distant ancestors were preserved in the fossil records 200 million years ago.

Early botanists believed all plants grew from seeds, but ferns do not have flowers and so how did they produce seeds? Ferns have spores that do not need pollination. The spores are so small that people in pre-microscope days believed they must have invisible seeds. This was clearly magic and so, if you did discover a fern seed, said to be released at midnight on June 23rd, St John’s Eve, you could use it to become invisible yourself.

The riddle of fern reproduction was solved in the 19th century as microscopes improved. If the spores find the right balance of light, temperature, and moisture, they grow into a small, thin sheet of green cells called a prothallus. This has male and female parts underneath. The male cells swim to fertilise the female cells and the embryo grows into a new fern.

The Victorian age was a time of fern collecting mania, amateur botanists had to have the latest find and some country folk made a good living from collecting ferns for sale. In 1862, local polymath P.O. Hutchinson wrote a book on local ferns that included prints taken from the fronds. You can still buy the book if you are interested in local species.

There is a huge range in British ferns, Hutchinson describes 18 local species in his book. The largest is the Royal Fern (Osmunda regalis), which can have fronds taller than a person. Not all ferns have large feathery fronds. The tiny Wall Rue (Asplenium ruta-muraria) grows in the mortar of the churchyard wall behind Potburys.

The Biodiversity Group will be following up on last year’s flower survey with a fern hunt this year. We hope to find all 18 of Hutchinson’s species and perhaps others that have escaped from gardens since then.