- Kathleen Scavone
- Posted On
The Living Landscape: Fascinating ferns
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Our recent spring showers brought with them a variety of flowering plants with a kaleidoscope of color, along with nearly every shade of green imaginable.
If you find yourself near a creek or wooded area, the fronds of large ferns are often found waving in the breeze.
Then, as you enter the realm where the light splinters and dragonflies hover like helicopters, the intricate beauty of a fern asserts itself.
Ferns have a differing cycle than blooming flora and are found year-round. These fern-tastic plants don't have seeds, so to complete their life cycles ferns use their spores to reproduce. When the wind carries their spores, ferns proliferate in concealed and moist spots to begin their lives as minuscule gametophytes.
These heart-shaped formations create sperm and eggs to create a sporophyte, when they morph into the familiar fern with fronds with which we are familiar. The undersides of the leafy fronds are where the sporophyte stage is seen, you know, those spots or sometimes lines (sporangia) that hold within their sacs the microscopic spores.
According to Bay Nature Magazine there are over 35 native fern species in the Bay Area, and the website of the California Native Plant Society, Calscape lists 113 ferns native to California.
Some ferns, such as the coffee fern, mosquito fern and California maidenhair fern do not have long fronds as a typical fern possesses but sport small, rounded green segments formed into lobes.
Ferns can proliferate in places that we normally associate with ferns, such as shady woods, and also in rock-strewn outcrops and ponds. No wonder ferns are prehistoric in looks – they are known to have been in existence for about 360 million years, according to the fossil record.
While not all ferns are useful beyond their beauty and function in the ecosystem, a few types have been eaten and used for medicine.
Scientists have determined that some types of ferns have been useful in removing soil and air contaminants.
The book, “Kashaya Pomo Plants” by Jennie Goodrich Et al. describes bracken fern root as having been used as a dark material for their basket design.
First, the root was pounded to aid in bark removal, then the dark core was divided into layers. The juice of the plant's young fronds was said to make a serviceable deodorant.
Chain ferns or woodwardia, an especially large fern with fronds reaching 3 to 6 feet in height, were once used to line the native people's earthen ovens while baking acorn bread.
Maidenhair fern was used after drying in the Kashaya Pomo's basket design and its stem was used to keep the pierced ear lobe hole from closing up.
Ferns that were also useful to the Indians were the sword fern, polypody fern and the purple fiddleneck fern.
Fiddlenecks' leaves were crushed then rubbed on the skin for skin problems such as impetigo and cold sores.
As someone once said, "With fronds like these, who need anemones?"
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, freelance writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.”