General Information About Ferns

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Fern, a mysterious and mystical plant

Ferns are one of the oldest higher plants on Earth. In age (345-230 million years, the end of the Paleozoic), they are second only to the lycopods and are almost the same age as the horsetail.

Once, in very ancient geological periods, they played a dominant role in the plant world, representing a huge variety of forms and species - from small herbaceous to giant treelike.

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Surprisingly, over hundreds of millions of years, ferns have adapted to the dramatically changing conditions of life on Earth and still thrive! Botanists count about 300 genera and more than 10,000 fern species. At the same time, lymphatics and horsetails have long since decreased in size and occupy a very modest niche in the modern plant community. Ferns are common across the globe.

They can be found in deserts and swamps, in rice fields and in brackish waters. The richest species composition of ferns is found in humid tropical forests, where they grow luxuriantly on the soil, and on the trunks, and on the branches of trees (the so-called epiphytes). And at present, the range of their sizes is amazing: from miniature plants a few millimeters long to tree-like tropical forms more than 20 meters high with a trunk diameter of about 50 centimeters!

The fern is perhaps the most mysterious and mystical plant on Earth. People have long attributed magical properties to him and included him in pagan rituals and sacred rites. Thus, the ancient Greeks built a temporary temple from fern stems during the winter solstice. One of the sanctuaries of Apollo at Delphi was built from ferns.

Fern spores had the strongest magical properties for the Greeks. In Ancient Russia, the fern was considered a plant of Perun, the pagan god of thunder, the giver of rain on the fields and the patron saint of the Russian army. On the night of Ivan Kupala, they were looking for a fern flower in the forest - Perunov color, tear-grass. Exactly at midnight, the burst-grass will bloom with a golden fiery heat-color, break the darkness of the night, destroy all bonds, all locks from unknown secrets.

And although that color will be bright, there will be no power to take your gaze from it. Once you find Perun's flower, then go to your villagers. You will sing together, lead round dances, jump over the fire fun. And when the hour before dawn comes, burn the wheel - the circle of the sun with an unquenchable fire, and let it go from the mountain into the river to unite the two elements, fire and water, for fertility, for prosperity and happiness for all one …"

In Russia it has long been believed that the fern color is "very useful for those who want to be smart and rich." But no one ever found a fern flower in the midnight forest … And all because it simply does not exist - these plants do not have flowers. They reproduce by overgrowth of rhizomes and spores - the smallest specks of dust that carry the embryo of new life.

Read the next part. Types of ferns for growing in an apartment →