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Mosses and ferns populated the Earth long before any flower bloomed or fish swam through the vast oceans of our earliest years. Soothing green mosses still fascinate and entertain many of us obsessive gardeners.
I lift mine from spots where they grow in our garden, and also do my bit to help them spread a bit more each year. Non-vascular, they have no roots, true stems or true leaves. Moisture simply seeps from cell to cell as they welcome the rain.
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Ferns rose up from the moist and mossy surface of the Earth as the first plants to develop true roots, stems and leaves. Tiny tubes that carry water from root to leaf allowed these novel plants to reach ever higher to catch the sunlight.
From that humble beginning, eons ago, ferns have carried on their simple lives and developed into countless different shapes, forms and sizes.
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These ancient plants still reproduce themselves with spores, as the mosses do. Never will you find a flower or seed from a fern.
Their spores must fall and grow on the moist Earth before first forming a gametophyte, which most of us never even notice. Eventually that simple structure will grow into a new fern. Their ways of reproducing are mysterious and hidden from the casual observer.
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The small dots that grow on the back of some mature fern leaves hold the spores. They will be released as a fine powder when the spores are ripe. Blown on the wind, some eventually some will settle where they can grow. This frond is the evergreen hardy fern Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Autumn Brilliance’ .
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Although ferns often look delicate and fragile, they are tougher than you might expect. So long as their basic needs are met, they thrive. They don’t need as much light as flowering plants, and so often grow under the canopy of trees, in dense and shady places.
Like mosses, they enjoy humidity and regular rain. Some ferns begin to get a little brown ‘burned’ edge on their leaves if the air grows too dry.
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The Victorians collected interesting ferns from around the world. They traveled far and wide to discover new species of ferns, often in the tropics. They developed the glass house, fern cabinet, and terrarium as ways to keep their ferns warm and humid on board ship and through cold British winters.
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Gardeners today have uncounted choices of interesting ferns to grow. We have a wide array of species ferns, plus many, many cultivars. Hardy ferns grow on every continent.
Our garden features many varieties of hardy evergreen and deciduous ferns. Some, like our Christmas ferns and favorite Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Autumn Brilliance,’ remain green through the winter. Others, like our many Japanese painted ferns, drop their leaves as days grow shorter in autumn, and remain dormant until early spring.
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Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Autumn Brilliance’ remains green and beautiful year round. Its new fronds emerge a beautiful shade of bronze.
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We also enjoy many ferns that aren’t hardy in our climate. These must come indoors before frost, but will return to the garden in late April.
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I have been fascinated by ferns for many, many years now. When I see a new one we don’t yet grow, I want it.
I won’t even try to explain; I’m too busy watering and potting up fern babies to grow on into good sized plants by late spring.
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When most of us think of fern fronds, we think of long fronds clothed on both sides of their stipe with small, fringed leaves known as pinna. Sometimes these are very finely divided into tinier and tinier parts. We watch for their unfurling fiddleheads in spring, and see them in our imagination waving in the breeze as they carpet a forest glade.
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But ferns take other forms, too. While some are lacy, others grow like broad tongues of green, or even like the long branched horns of a deer. Usually ferns send up leaves from a stem most often found at, or just below, the ground.
But some even grow tall, like trees, where each year new fronds grow from the uppermost crown, leaving a scaly brown ‘stem’ trunk beneath.
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The long hairy stem of a ‘footed fern’ creeps along the ground in nature. On this one, tongue-like leaves appear at intervals along its length.
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The different forms, colors, and growth habits of these beautiful plants intrigue me. I love to watch them grow, and I enjoy trying to grow them in different ways.
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It isn’t always easy to find a good source for ferns. Some mail-order nurseries will charge huge amounts of money for a fairly simple fern. Go to your local big-box store, and you may find only a couple of common varieties.
I always drool over the Plant Delights catalog, because they carry such a wide selection of different ferns, and offer ferns you won’t find anywhere else. They travel the world to collect new species and varieties of beautiful ferns, and also carry new cultivars from breeders.
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Maidenhair fern growing in our fern garden last May.
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Most of their ferns are hardy in our Zone 7 climate. If we can keep them hydrated through the hottest part of summer, they will perform for many years to come.
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Athyrium niponicum pictum ‘Apple Court’
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Yet, winter is a special time when I enjoy small potted ferns indoors. And I’ve found an excellent source for ferns at The Great Big Greenhouse in the Richmond area. They carry the widest selection of both hardy and tender ferns that I’ve found anywhere in our region.
It will be a few weeks yet before their spring shipment of hardy ferns arrives, but no matter. Right now, they have a gargantuan selection of tropical ferns to tempt the most winter weary gardener. They come in all sizes from tiny to huge, too. February is a very special month at this favorite gardening haunt, because they have several events planned for gardeners devoted to growing plants indoors.
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I always explore their collection of tropical plants for terrariums and fairy gardens, which come in 1″ pots. I have found so many wonderful ferns, like the fern growing on my windowsill in the photo above. I bought this in a 1″ pot in the spring of 2016 and grew it outdoors on the porch that summer. It came indoors that fall, and has grown in our windowsill ever since.
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Those tiny ferns in 1″ pots very quickly grow up into full size beauties that will fill a pot or basket.
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After spending the remaining winter months inside, I quickly move them out into larger containers as the weather allows. This is an easy and economical way to have ferns ready for summer hanging baskets and pots.
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Ferns offer endless variations on a simple theme. Elegant and easy to grow, we find something new and beautiful to do with ferns in each season of the year.
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Fiddlehead of Brilliance autumn fern in April
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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2018
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For the Daily Post’s
Forest Garden 