Fascination of ferns

by Palita PUNCHIBANDARA SUBASINGHE

To most people, a fern is a very fascinating, graceful and lush ornamental plant. Ferns seem to evoke a cool, calm and peaceful image.

Though lacking in flowers, they have an enormous variety of form, size and texture and even colour to make it a choice of many plant lovers.

Ferns are a very ancient family of plants. They first appear in the fossil record in the early-Carboniferous period, some 350,000,000 years ago and are older than land animals and far older than the dinosaurs. They were thriving on earth for two hundred million years before the flowering plants. Like all plants, ferns have evolved to suit their environment. They are very adaptable and can be grown in a wide variety of situations. While most prefer moist, shaded conditions, there are ferns that are suited to open sunny positions, growing naturally in rocky crevices, open well walls, exposed coastal cliffs, high on living trees or on fallen trees. Some ferns are so tiny that they are only one cm thick while there are some others which reach 15m or more. Some ferns spread to form large colonies in rainforests.

During the early 1800s, Pteridomania, or fern madness, swept through Britain. Hundreds of books and articles encouraged a popular fascination with ferns and resulted in the widespread collection and cultivation of the plant. Ferns were so popular that from the 1850s, in England, they also appeared on buildings and everyday objects from carpets to greetings cards.

Aristocratic families built special greenhouses called ferneries at great cost to house expensive and exotic fern collections.

As flowering plants are so common, we are all familiar with how they reproduce. It's useful to look at this first, to give us something to compare to ferns. Flowering plants reproduce when pollen from a male flower - carried by wind, insect or other vector - fertilizes the female flower. This results in the formation of fruits and seeds which eventually grow into The mysterious way, however, in which a fern reproduced itself caused wonder and speculation for centuries and in their ignorance people thought that the "invisible" seed had the power to impart the same potential to its finder. Shakespeare refers to it in Henry IV when Chamberlain says to Gadshill "You are more beholding to the night than to fern seed for your walking invisible". As late as the nineteenth century this superstition still existed in Britain amongst country people in various parts of the country.

If you look underneath a fern frond or a leaf, you will often see small lumps, spots or patches that look like they are stuck onto the under surface.

These patches are where you find the spores. The spores grow inside casings called sporangia. Not every frond has spores under it: fronds that have the spores are called fertile fronds.

If these spores find suitable conditions, they will grow into a tiny heart-shaped plantlet called a prothallus or gametophyte. In this process, the spore behaves quite like the seed of a higher plant, except that what grows from the seed is the full adult plant, but what grows from the spore is the gametophyte. The gametophyte is not the full fern, but a plant with only half the genetic material of the adult fern. The gametophyte is the intermediate stage from spore to adult fern.

If the gametophyte finds itself in a suitably moist place, fertilisation takes place, and it is transformed into a complete adult plant. It becomes what's called a sporophyte. Given the right conditions, this tiny sporophyte will continue to grow into a full adult fern, where it can produce spores of its own, to repeat the life cycle.

When trying to start a fern collection, one may have to keep several things in mind. First, ferns generally require some shade. In order to look their best they should be grown in dappled lighting; there are only a few species that will tolerate full sun. Second, be sure that your ferns will be able to be watered at least once a week, no matter where you decide to put them. They can be grown in cement pots (preferably well-weathered), plastic pots, clay pots, wire baskets lined with a suitable material such as coir matting, or in the ground.

Irrespective of the location, they will require a regular schedule of watering. Occasional application of a fertilizer will enhance growth as well as looks of the fern giving it a lush appearance. For this purpose, any organic fertilizer will do, while a balanced fertilizer (20-20-20) will also be suitable if used according to instructions on the package. For those who prefer ease of application there is a slow release fertilizer which can be applied monthly.

Another important ingredient is humidity. Remember that most ferns rely on humidity probably more than anything else to sustain them.

Ferns grow very well in any natural organic mixture. While preparing the potted media for ferns one should keep in mind that it should be light in weight, full of decomposed organic material and porous in the long run. A mixture used by the writer consists of three parts of river sand, two parts leaf mould, one part well decomposed cow manure and one part of coir dust.

Staghorn or Platycerium ferns are very popular though they cost more comparatively. Unlike most other ferns, platycerium can be mounted on wood slabs. A method used by the writer is to coat suitably - sized slabs of expanded polystyrene (Rigiform) with a thick layer of cement and allowed to weather before use.