Love Foliage? Fall For Ferns

With infinite variety and the ability to grow in tricky conditions, it’s little wonder that ferns have been captivating foliage fans for centuries, says Val Bourne.

- Val Bourne

The older I get, the more I come to realise that foliage, form and structure are every bit as important as flowers. That’s why my hardy ferns are among my favourite plants – it’s fascinating to watch their fronds unfurl in spring and early summer.

Fossil evidence suggests that fernlike plants have been around for 450 million years, thus explaining their lack of flowers: they evolved before the bee. Rather than using pollen, many reproduce by spores on the underside of the leaf. These spores germinate in moist, mild conditions, which is why most of our native hardy ferns are concentrated in high-rainfall areas on the western half of Britain – and also why several have appeared all by themselves on my wall near the spring.

As usual, we can thank science for their many differences. It’s all down to their chromosomes, with some species boasting up of 1,200 chromosomes in each cell, giving rise to many possible combinations. However, there are some common characteristics that they share, and you will find that certain descriptive words crop up again and again in their Latin names. These include cristata (crested), crispum (frilly edged), crenatum (scallop shaped), frizelliae (very crinkled), fimbriatum (with a small fringe), congestum (busy and rather like the M25 on a Friday evening), grandiceps (large-headed) and saggitato (arrow-shaped). Other ferns bear the name of the collector who first discovered them, or the place where they were found.