Brake Ferns: cleans up arsenic in water |
Brake Ferns have been proven to clean up arsenic in water.
General Fern information below:
American Fern Society: http://amerfernsoc.org | links |
The American Fern Society is over 100 years old. With over 900 members worldwide, it is one of the largest international fern clubs in the world. It was established in 1893 with the objective of fostering interest in ferns and fern allies. To this end it encourages correspondence and the exchange of information and specimens between members via its newsletter the Fiddlehead Forum. We have “Fern Forays” into the woods every August. These field trips provide a wonderful way to learn more about wild ferns from experts and also afford an occasion to meet other people with a similar passion for ferns. This web page is designed to expand on this exchange of information with amateurs and professionals around the world. We hope that in this way many more people will be able to explore these interesting plants and their allies.Ferns have been with us for more than 300 million years and in that time the diversification of their form has been phenomenal. Ferns grow in many different habitats around the world. The ferns were at their height during the Carboniferous Period (the age of ferns) as they were the dominant part of the vegetation at that time. During this era some fern like groups actually evolved seeds (the seed ferns) making up perhaps half of the fern like foliage in Carboniferous forests and much later giving rise to the flowering plants. Most of the ferns of the Carboniferous became extinct but some later evolved into our modern ferns. There are about 12,000 species in the world today.
Los Angeles Fern Society: http://smcdaniel.net/laifs |
Growing Ferns: http://www.ces.uga.edu/pubcd/B737-w.htm |
Ferns became popular indoor plants during the Victorian Era.
Today, they are used as specimens in atriums, greenhouses and conservatories and we find them in the smallest apartments to the largest homes. They offer a quiet, graceful beauty by softening landscapes indoors and out.Among the nonflowering plants, ferns and their relatives are unique. Numbering about 9,000, they represent a wide assortment of plant forms, and they have a very unusual life cycle.
The life cycle is unusual because it consists of two distinct generations of two different plants. The fern, as we know it, is the sexless or sporophyte generation.
Instead of growing from seed like most flowering plants, ferns come from a single spore that develops into the sporophyte.
Spores are born in a spore case. The case contains many individual spores and is usually found on the underside of a leaf (frond) or on separate stalks. The photograph in Figure 1 shows spore cases on the underside of the leaves (pinnae) of a holly-leaf fern. Inexperienced gardeners often become concerned over these fruiting bodies and assume their plants are infested with unusual insects.
The reproduction of ferns from spores is different from other plants because there is an in-between stem (asexual stage). The individual spore is extremely small and germinates into a flat leaf-like body called a prothallium. The sexual stage comes next.
Sexual organs develop on the underside of the prothallium, and fertilization occurs. Depending on the kind of fern, it may take two to six months after fertilization for the first fronds to appear.Usually, gardeners and greenhouse producers don't reproduce indoor ferns from spores. Most indoor ferns are separated into several pieces by root division. Details for both are given under the sections “Dividing” and “Potting.”
Planting A Fern Garden:
| http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/envirohort/articles/herbaceous_plants/ferngar.html |
One of the pleasures of native fern gardening is propagating the plants and getting them established. Plants for a small, home fernery may be successfully transplanted from their native site, but only when they are abundant or if they will be destroyed by development and you have permission to move them. It is better to share plants from a friend's fern garden or purchase ones that have been grown commercially. Never attempt to transplant rare species. There is too great a chance of losing them. Such species generally may be propagated by spores without damaging the plant. Increasing a rare species through spore propagation is a good conservation practice.
House Ferns: http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/garden/ornamentals/ferns.html |
Ferns: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/hortinternet/ferns.html |
Indoor Ferns:
| http://www.ext.vt.edu/departments/envirohort/factsheets2/indoor/nov89pr2.html |
Western Bracken Fern: Image | Image II |
| http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/online.bks/weeds/westfern.htm |
A perennial fern which reproduces by spores and widely creeping, branching underground stems, sometimes forming colonies. The large compound leaves (fronds) are 1 to 4 feet high, and 1/2 to 1 l/2 feet long. The leaf stalk, usually mistaken for the stem, actually is attached to the rhizome under the ground.
Braken Fern:
| http://www.vet.purdue.edu/depts/addl/toxic/plant23.htm |
Braken Fern | Image |
| http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/eesc/environmental/programs/culres/ethbot/m-p/Pteridium.htm |
Bracken are often up to 5 feet tall. The rhizomes are perennial, often 8” deep, running horizontally for long distances, often branching. The rhizomes can be as thick as 2 cm, black outside with numerous hairs, and white and glutinous inside with tough longitudinal fibers in the middle. The fronds are borne individually along the rhizome (unlike most ferns that cluster their fronds from a central compact base), and have tall, smooth, light-green stems and coarsely branching pinnae. The fronds and lower pinnaae are broadly triangular in shape. The pinnules are numerous and deeply toothed, and the sori, when present, are marginal and mostly continuous, covered by an inrolled leaf margin.Habitat
Meadows, roadsides, clearings, sterile sandy soils, burns, avalanche tracks, dry to wet forests, acid sites such as lake-shores and bogs; often weedy, at low to subalpine elevations. Rhizomes are deep giving it the ability to survive even intense fires.Use
Several groups boiled and ate the fiddleheads of Bracken. Virtually all coastal groups use the rhizomes as food. Most dug them up in late fall or winter. They coiled up the rhizomes and allowed them to dry. Later, they roasted them in an open fire until the outer skin could be peeled off, then pounded the inner parts with a stick. After removing the tough, central fibers, they ate the whitish starchy inside, usually with fish eggs or oil, because it was constipating. One tribe broke the rhizomes into pieces four finger-widths long and ate them with salmon eggs or Grease. Another group also steamed the rhizomes in pits, when there were too many to roast.Another tribe made a type of bread by pounding the roasted rhizomes into flour, mixing this with water, and forming the dough into flat cakes, which were then roasted.
Warning
Bracken leaves and hay contaminated with Bracken are known to be poisonous to livestock when eaten in large amounts. The toxic ingredient is an enzyme, thiaminase, which destroys the animals' thiamine (B-vitamin) reserves.