Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your old roommate who always found the
Speaker 1: best furniture on the side of the road. Ali Ward,
Speaker 1: did you know that you love ferns? Not yet, said tight,
Speaker 1: you're about to. I'm going to tell you one person
Speaker 1: who loves ferns. It's this guest. In fact, I first
Speaker 1: saw this ologist in this quick video about ferns, and
Speaker 1: they were wearing a shirt that said iHeart ferns, but
Speaker 1: the heart was a fern geme to fight. You're going
Speaker 1: to find out everything about that later. And they said
Speaker 1: that ferns were fantastic. This is in the first five
Speaker 1: seconds of the video, and I was like, they're on
Speaker 1: And they wrote the twenty twenty five book Ferns Lessons
Speaker 1: in Survival from the Earth's Most Adaptable Plants. And they're
Speaker 1: an associate professor at Cornell's Boyce Thompson Institute. They got
Speaker 1: their PhD in ferns at Duke University, where they're also
Speaker 1: a scholar in residence. And we'll talk about their stories
Speaker 1: and their history and their deep love of ferns in
Speaker 1: a moment, But first, thank you to everyone who supports
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Speaker 1: can join for a dollar a month, and you can
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Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews for the show,
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's jump into terodology. So the pet comes from
Speaker 1: the Greek word for a wing or a feather, so
Speaker 1: like pterodactyl or helicopter helico, which means spiral, and pitu,
Speaker 1: which means wing. So if you didn't know, yeah, the
Speaker 1: pate in helicopter is its own word in there. It's weird.
Speaker 1: But ferns they look feathery, so people who study them
Speaker 1: are officially on record as terodologists. And so let's illuminate
Speaker 1: the shadowy world of ferns to hear about their long evolution.
Speaker 1: What ferns not to have in your house icons to
Speaker 1: fern scientists, haploid, diploid spot packets, Do they have roots?
Speaker 1: How ferns can teach us about sexual identity? The most
Speaker 1: expensive ferns, the tastiest ferns, the trendiest ferns, mathematical mysteries,
Speaker 1: and a genome that makes no sense to me, at
Speaker 1: least with the absolutely charming, enthusiastic scholar professor, researcher, fern
Speaker 1: advocate and pterotologist doctor Fayway Lee Lee him, where are
Speaker 1: you right now?
Speaker 4: Right now in nor Kolena. I'm actually in a process
Speaker 4: off moving my lab Duke University.
Speaker 1: Does North Carolina have good ferns? I feel like I
Speaker 1: don't even know if North Carolina has burns?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean North America in January is not a
Speaker 4: great place to find ferns. The most exciting place in
Speaker 4: North America to find ferns is in the desert.
Speaker 1: What no?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah. Arizona, for example, has one of the highest
Speaker 4: fern diversity.
Speaker 1: I thought berns needed a lot of darkness and water,
Speaker 1: and those arely two things Arizona does not have.
Speaker 4: Well, so they have a what we call a calmphoid ferns.
Speaker 4: They are desert ferns. They adapted to this really dry
Speaker 4: environment and they really took advantage of it and took off.
Speaker 4: They diversify so much diversity there.
Speaker 1: What do they look like?
Speaker 4: Usually they look really crispy. They can lose their water
Speaker 4: up to ninety percent and I can still come back alive.
Speaker 4: So if you, for example, have a hike in a
Speaker 4: desert in Arizona, Texas, whatever it sees on crispy ferns,
Speaker 4: put them no zibla back, pulls on water over it.
Speaker 4: They might come back. Just grin it up.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, does moss do that as well? Can't
Speaker 1: moss like dehydrate and rehydrate a lot?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, in many ways, they are like mosses. They
Speaker 4: had resurrection ferns. They looked dead, but then they still
Speaker 4: can come back.
Speaker 1: Well, what a name? What a compelling name? Like zombie
Speaker 1: coming back from the dead. When I think of a fern,
Speaker 1: I think of these dark forests, and I think of
Speaker 1: like deep gullies and streams and wetness and stuff. But
Speaker 1: what exactly is a fern? Like, they're a plant, but
Speaker 1: they're not like normal plants, right, not like the plants
Speaker 1: were used to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there are many ways to define our ferns.
Speaker 4: You're gonna define it by looking out why they doesn't
Speaker 4: have They don't have seeds, they don't produce flowers. But
Speaker 4: the most definitive way to define a fern is their
Speaker 4: sex life. Let me hear it. Okay, well they don't
Speaker 4: have flowers, right, and then flowers where the sex happens,
Speaker 4: the sperm will fertilizes that you have the next generations.
Speaker 4: Fernds don't have flowers and the funnier friends you see
Speaker 4: outside out deploids. They have two set of chromosomes, like
Speaker 4: flying plants and humans for example, But I have this
Speaker 4: entirely different generations that we call the gameto pace, and
Speaker 4: a Gametophytes are haploids.
Speaker 1: So diploid two means two copies of a gene and
Speaker 1: haploid means one copy. Most of your cells are diploid,
Speaker 1: but game meat cells like sperm and egg are haploid
Speaker 1: because they're gonna hook up with each other. So ferns
Speaker 1: have this stage gametophytes, which means like a sexy plant.
Speaker 1: And it's easy to remember because gammutophytes typically look like
Speaker 1: little green hearts or sometimes they look like an ovenmit,
Speaker 1: which I guess is sexy, depending on who wear the
Speaker 1: person is wearing the oven mit. But yeah, gamutofytes structures
Speaker 1: of sexual independence.
Speaker 4: And that independent they live outside of the deploy ferns
Speaker 4: that green. They're usually super tiny, smaller than a new fingernails,
Speaker 4: for example. And this is where the sex happens in ferns.
Speaker 4: Nine of flowers by in a gam doovive phase.
Speaker 1: And does that come out as the spores that you
Speaker 1: see that powdery brown stuff on the back.
Speaker 4: Of the leave right exactly? So the spores were geminating
Speaker 4: to gamdovides, and the gamdovides are free living. They will
Speaker 4: produce egg and sperms and they will fertilized and have
Speaker 4: become a zygo, and a zygo will become you know,
Speaker 4: the furny ferns you see outside. So they basically have
Speaker 4: two independent generations, the haploid phase and the deploy phase.
Speaker 1: And is this an older type of reproduction or is
Speaker 1: it just divergent evolution or is this something that's kind
Speaker 1: of ancestral.
Speaker 4: Only in ferns. You have these two separate generations living
Speaker 4: independent with each other. And that's why make that unique.
Speaker 4: That exactly defines a firm.
Speaker 1: What is there basic anatomy? Do they have a rhizome
Speaker 1: or do they have roots? If you had to give
Speaker 1: the basic parts of a fern.
Speaker 4: Okay, so I guess the tax for ferns will have
Speaker 4: a horizontal rhizome, and the rhizome you can think about
Speaker 4: it's a stem, and then you have leaf, which is
Speaker 4: a fern frons coming out, and then beneath it you
Speaker 4: have the roots, so a chhizome, a stem, roots coming
Speaker 4: down and the leaf coming out. Okay, that's a basic
Speaker 4: principle there. And the roots are true roots. They are
Speaker 4: not like a brow fight roots, which is a rhizoids.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so that's a misconception that they don't have roots.
Speaker 4: They have proper vasculatures in their roots system.
Speaker 5: Nice.
Speaker 1: So yes, ferns have roots, but they also have rhizomes
Speaker 1: that act like a stem, but they look kind of
Speaker 1: like a clumpy knob at the base of the fronds.
Speaker 1: And then below the rhizome you have the actual roots
Speaker 1: of the plant. Obviously, with over ten thousand species of ferns,
Speaker 1: we're not going to discuss every fern, but we can
Speaker 1: get the broad strokes, especially between the massy or bryophyte
Speaker 1: looking little gametophytes which are tiny and the frond looking
Speaker 1: adult sporophytes. I love also that you call them mossy
Speaker 1: mosses and ferny ferns. Yeah, like to get an idea
Speaker 1: of like what they look.
Speaker 4: Like and the fern gamdo fights where the halflo face
Speaker 4: they do look in many ways like a bro fights.
Speaker 1: And we had a great episode about moss a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and I'd never considered what their life cycle
Speaker 1: was like, or how rich and diversity they are, and
Speaker 1: how you can go up close to one and just
Speaker 1: see so much that you would overlook unless you had
Speaker 1: a loop and stuff. But have you always been like
Speaker 1: a plant person or did you get into this via
Speaker 1: the spore angle or what what made it so that
Speaker 1: you are an expert in you're a terdologist.
Speaker 4: I'm a yes. Yeah. So I grew up in Taiwan.
Speaker 4: There's just so many fern diversity in Taiwan. So to
Speaker 4: put into a perspective, Taiwan has eight hundred fern species.
Speaker 4: Taiwan is like a third of the third size of
Speaker 4: New York State. The whole North America has only four
Speaker 4: hundred species. So this tiny allen has double of fern
Speaker 4: diversity compared to USA. And so I just really got
Speaker 4: really fascinated about the diversity of friends. My parents have
Speaker 4: a little cabin in the woods, and I spent a
Speaker 4: lot of time in a forest looking around and just
Speaker 4: realized there's so many of them and I just wanted
Speaker 4: to identify them learn more about them. And that's how
Speaker 4: I've become hooked with ferns.
Speaker 1: Did your parents get you plant books and were they?
Speaker 1: Didn't you come back to the house like all these plants?
Speaker 4: They did? Did they give me many field guides? And
Speaker 4: that's yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like with ferns there is something really beautiful
Speaker 1: about doing spore pressings and like the preservation. Do you
Speaker 1: find when you're doing this research? Do you have to
Speaker 1: go back in archives to see specimens that were collected
Speaker 1: a long time ago that are pressed How are you
Speaker 1: even researching and cataloging them?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we use herbarium a lot. So herbarier is like
Speaker 4: a library of debt plants. It's really a magical place.
Speaker 4: So it's a place you basically have physical plant materials
Speaker 4: from around the world and from different plant lineages and
Speaker 4: just go to different cabinets and you can pull them
Speaker 4: hous can look at them very closely. And so we
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time in herbarium looking for characters,
Speaker 4: trying to identify different species of ferns. We also were
Speaker 4: able to find some new species just by looking at
Speaker 4: all herbarian specimens.
Speaker 1: No, how do you tell are you able to take
Speaker 1: a little fragment of it and do any DNA now
Speaker 1: on it to Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. That's the beauty of herbarians specimens. They preserve
Speaker 4: so much information that DNA you can get or you can
Speaker 4: get DNA from specimens as as over one hundred years
Speaker 4: old specimens. And they have the locality, we know where
Speaker 4: they come from. They have the spores where you can
Speaker 4: look at this spar mophology. So yeah, her parent's very
Speaker 4: important for botanical research. And in the past we've discovered
Speaker 4: several new species. So big. Before you discover something new, right,
Speaker 4: you got a chance to name it and yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: One time we discovers a new genus and my advisor
Speaker 4: and I decide to name it after Lady Gaga, So
Speaker 4: the genus is called Gaga.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, that's amazing. Was your advisor Lady Gaga ban
Speaker 1: or did you know that, like this is a good
Speaker 1: move for ferns.
Speaker 4: She's she's a deep lady Gaga fans. The two things
Speaker 4: we talk about when I was a graduate students her
Speaker 4: cat and Lady Gaga's newest album.
Speaker 1: Did Lady Gaga ever find out about that?
Speaker 4: Yes, she was interviewed several times and people asked her
Speaker 4: of all the Gaga friends and yeah shere acknowledge of this,
Speaker 4: and the Gaga friends would describe, they have a really
Speaker 4: odd reproductive methods and they Bipe has a lot of
Speaker 4: sexual reproductions. And so Lediga made a comments of all
Speaker 4: the Gaga friends saying they are sexless.
Speaker 1: And one of the researchers spearheading this twenty twelve naming
Speaker 1: was doctor Kathleen Pryor, who was inspired in part by
Speaker 1: this sequined light sea, foamy green and heart shaped body
Speaker 1: suit that the pop star had performed in, and also
Speaker 1: the DNA of this genus of nineteen different ferns has
Speaker 1: some repeating pairs of Gaga or Gaga, and Doctor Pryor
Speaker 1: also said that the naming was in honor of Lady
Speaker 1: Gaga's quote fervent defense of equality and individual expression, and
Speaker 1: that they think her second album Born This Way is
Speaker 1: enormously empowering, especially for disenfranchised people and communities like lgbt
Speaker 1: ethnic groups, women, and she added scientists who study odd ferns.
Speaker 1: And while Lady Gaga has identified as bisexual, she's also
Speaker 1: been quick to note that she doesn't represent the LGBTQ
Speaker 1: plus community and just speaks up for equity and freedom
Speaker 1: of sexual expression. And there were also earlier in her
Speaker 1: career rumors of her being trans, and her response was
Speaker 1: usually along the lines of, so what if I were so?
Speaker 1: Fern commuta fights make male and female sex cells proof
Speaker 1: that nature is not on a binary and so now
Speaker 1: you're saying that they have kind of like a sexless reproduction.
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering, like, because the spores always get me
Speaker 1: with ferns, I think that's one of the things that's
Speaker 1: most interesting when you are like looking at spores, say
Speaker 1: under a microscope, Do they have a lot of different
Speaker 1: morphologies that determine what happens in their different like diploid
Speaker 1: and haploid phases, Or is a spoor is a spor
Speaker 1: is a spore? Do they all look the same?
Speaker 4: Spores contain a lot of informations a specie. Different genera
Speaker 4: have really different ornamentations. Stems that have pores on the
Speaker 4: spore walls and those are very important characters, and the
Speaker 4: size are important too. Many ferns like to become a polyploids,
Speaker 4: so they duplicalated genomes pretty often, so I have four
Speaker 4: copies of chromosomes. Many of them even have tall copies
Speaker 4: of chromosomes. And when they do that, the spores become
Speaker 4: very big. So we can measure the spores size as
Speaker 4: a proxy of how many set of chromosomes they have
Speaker 4: in a genome.
Speaker 1: So to recap those little bumps on the underside of
Speaker 1: a fern leaf, those are called psi, and each one
Speaker 1: has little orbs, which in turn has the spores. And
Speaker 1: when the time is right, the spores pop out like
Speaker 1: someone from a giant birthday cake, and they find a
Speaker 1: wet spot to germinate into that gametophyte with little root
Speaker 1: like rhizoids, and these can make the haploids or eggs.
Speaker 1: And when a sperm finds an egg through a film
Speaker 1: of water, then you get the diploid parts of the
Speaker 1: life cycle. As the fern leaves begin to sprout and grow,
Speaker 1: they commutify shrivels up at the base. As that fern
Speaker 1: plant begins to grow up, the cycle starts again. But yes,
Speaker 1: chromosomes in ferns, it turns out, can be wild and
Speaker 1: do people who are researching ferns, such as yourself and
Speaker 1: your lab, are you going about it from that genomics?
Speaker 1: Are you in it for the chromosomes and the reproduction
Speaker 1: cycle or are a lot of terodologists in conservation and
Speaker 1: taxonomy of it? What makes a fern person kind of
Speaker 1: come alive with the research?
Speaker 4: Yeah. So in the past where I've down many different
Speaker 4: aspects of ferm biology, We've downsound taxonomy, we describe species,
Speaker 4: looking at how those different species relate to each other,
Speaker 4: and nowadays where we focus a lot on their genomics side. Now, friends,
Speaker 4: are weird? Does a fern species auphioglossoms retic golottum it
Speaker 4: has fourteen hundred chromosomes? What so humans have forty six? Right?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 4: And then this guy has fourteen hundred chromosomes and just
Speaker 4: why why do they do that? And their genomes are
Speaker 4: huge as well? So you know DNA is composed of
Speaker 4: atgc right, four different letters, and humans for example have
Speaker 4: like three billions of different letters.
Speaker 1: So most humans have forty six chromosomes twenty three pairs,
Speaker 1: and each chromosome in humans can have up to three
Speaker 1: hundred million base pairs, and the base pairs are the
Speaker 1: rungs of that spiral ladder of DNA, and A pairs
Speaker 1: with t, C pairs with G. So our genome contains
Speaker 1: over three billion base pairs of those letters.
Speaker 4: But there's a firnt species has one hundred and sixty
Speaker 4: billion letters, like a lot bigger than human genome. Why right,
Speaker 4: And that's something I want to figure out. How do
Speaker 4: I do this?
Speaker 1: So unraveling that DNA mystery that's in the future of ferns.
Speaker 1: But what about tales of ferns past? Were they one
Speaker 1: of the earlier plants when we see drawings of like
Speaker 1: dinosaurs surrounded by ferns, is that pretty accurate? Did they
Speaker 1: predate flowers by a lot like flowering plants?
Speaker 4: Well, yes, I know so. So ferns are both really
Speaker 4: old and also are really young.
Speaker 1: Tell me everything you know.
Speaker 4: They're old in a sense. You can trace the whole
Speaker 4: lineage back to company forwards, like three hundred million years ago,
Speaker 4: and that is the time that ferns really dominated Earth.
Speaker 4: The coals were burning now are coming from ferns and
Speaker 4: the engine relatives, so you can think about friends are
Speaker 4: feeling the civilizations of human beings anyway, So they dominate Earth,
Speaker 4: and then in Cretaceous, like one hundred million years ago,
Speaker 4: flying plants come along and they are bad. They are bullies.
Speaker 4: They pushed ferns out, so they become the dominant actors
Speaker 4: of the forest, and the friends have to figure out
Speaker 4: how to do next. So they went under story, and
Speaker 4: they kind of staging a comeback when they were under story,
Speaker 4: and they adapt to the really low line environments and
Speaker 4: they flourished and they diversify in the lowla environment. And
Speaker 4: so most of the French species, most of the fur
Speaker 4: lineage we see today, are actually really young, young, younger
Speaker 4: than the flying plants.
Speaker 1: Oh, because they had to adapt to it exactly.
Speaker 4: We call them the diversifying the shadow of angelsperms in
Speaker 4: the shadow of flying plants. Wow, yeah, they're young.
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I always thought that they had
Speaker 1: been around forever and it must have just been darker
Speaker 1: than which is not right.
Speaker 4: You are wrong.
Speaker 1: So ferns themselves have been on Earth for four hundred
Speaker 1: million years, but they have adapted to temperature fluctuations and
Speaker 1: they've kind of rebranded as understory low light champions in
Speaker 1: some case is once the angiosperms or the flowering plants
Speaker 1: came in and ruined their whole vibe. Do you get
Speaker 1: a chance to go back to Taiwan and are you
Speaker 1: just like ferns, ferns, ferns, ferns. Do you go back
Speaker 1: and you're just like, ah, finally, so good ass ferns.
Speaker 4: Yeah? Every time, that number of species just blew me
Speaker 4: away again and again. Walking though little trial, you see
Speaker 4: a hundred of species. It's fantastic. One thing I miss
Speaker 4: a lot in Taiwan is the food. And you can
Speaker 4: find feto hats in Taiwan and then people cook it
Speaker 4: and it's pretty common and they're really really delicious.
Speaker 1: What's the best way to eat a fiddlehead?
Speaker 4: Okay, I guess I need to clarify. So not all
Speaker 4: fetoheads are edible. Okay, some are all right, toxic and cosinogenic.
Speaker 4: In eastern US, you will in the spring, you will
Speaker 4: go on and pick feto hats, right, So just makes
Speaker 4: that you pick the right ones, don't pick the toxic one.
Speaker 4: But the feto has we eat in the US, for example,
Speaker 4: or is the species Commatsusia throphiopters. The common name is
Speaker 4: ostrich ferns and the best way to cook it, I
Speaker 4: think it is. First thing, you branch them. They're very tanning,
Speaker 4: a lot of tanning, and you want to get rid
Speaker 4: of them. And then I will ass some butter, some
Speaker 4: fido has, some shrimps, some pasta together, make it up.
Speaker 4: It's good. It's crounchy but also a bit slimy. So
Speaker 4: it's like really interesting balance that I really.
Speaker 1: Like, kind of like okra, like a little bit. Have
Speaker 1: you ever had okra?
Speaker 4: Okra is too slimy, but I think, yeah, like the
Speaker 4: crounchy bit is better.
Speaker 1: Do a lot of animals go out lunching on fiddleheads.
Speaker 1: Who eats ferns? In terms of like evolution.
Speaker 4: Ferns are famous for not being eaten really, so I
Speaker 4: mentioned some vito hads. Some ferns are toxic, right, and
Speaker 4: they are toxic for reasons they don't want to be eaten.
Speaker 4: Friends are also very famous for having very little herbivalry.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 4: Don't get eaten? Very little insects eat them?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So if you if you.
Speaker 4: Go out right again, go on a hike, look at
Speaker 4: all the fern fronts. They're usually intact. If you look
Speaker 4: at the flying plants. Someone's got chewed up pretty badly,
Speaker 4: and so the comparisons, the contrast pretty striking. And the
Speaker 4: really cool thing about this is you can take advantage
Speaker 4: of this. So there's a big c company called Koteva.
Speaker 4: They produce a lot of coins and solbans in the US,
Speaker 4: and they got really interesting in ferns because they realize
Speaker 4: no one eat ferns, but why right, And so they
Speaker 4: develop very sophisticated screening pipelines. So they're able to identify
Speaker 4: a number of insect cydal proteins from ferns and they
Speaker 4: were able to put us in corns and that the
Speaker 4: new generation of corn is super resistant to a lot
Speaker 4: of like foam army worms and so on, so probafully
Speaker 4: in a future, maybe the corns you are eating has
Speaker 4: a bit of fern DNA in.
Speaker 1: Like kind of TransGeneration. Yeah, kind of, So you're eating
Speaker 1: a little bit of fern dna. Which then does that
Speaker 1: mean that they can use fewer insecticides exactly and pesticides
Speaker 1: on it?
Speaker 4: That's that's the whole point. Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean, you'd think ferns have so many genes to spare,
Speaker 1: you know, they have so many for some of them,
Speaker 1: they're like, take a couple, We're fine. You guys have forty,
Speaker 1: We're fine. Yeah. What about when it comes to ferns
Speaker 1: in the media, Fern Goalie Land before time. Have you
Speaker 1: seen either of these? Do you ever notice ferns in
Speaker 1: like animation and you go that fern wouldn't be there, To.
Speaker 4: Be honest, I've heard about those movies whenever watching them
Speaker 4: The Girl in.
Speaker 5: The US, right, So yeah, but.
Speaker 4: Between two ferns, that's I guess that's the one I know.
Speaker 1: Of between two ferns.
Speaker 4: I'm your host, Keanu Reep, I'm your host sach alpha Acus,
Speaker 4: and my guest today is Keanu Reeves.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being here, Thanks for having me here.
Speaker 3: On a scale of one two, one hundred, how many
Speaker 3: words do you know one to one hundred?
Speaker 4: But do you know fifty words?
Speaker 1: Do you know seventy five words?
Speaker 4: Funny as hell? So the ferns in between two ferns,
Speaker 4: by the two friends that said to be on the size,
Speaker 4: they are the Philippus cordifolia. So it's the comming now
Speaker 4: of it is Boston ferns, or sometimes called the sword
Speaker 4: ferns and Boston friends are kind of they are the
Speaker 4: most widely cultivated friends in the entire world. It's so popular.
Speaker 4: And the origins of Boston ferns it is a bit unclear,
Speaker 4: but it was hypothesized that there was a shipment of
Speaker 4: ferns from Europe in the late late nineteenth centuries, and
Speaker 4: that shutments contains a lot of really weird variety of
Speaker 4: Boston ferns and sometimes droopy. Some of them are highly dissected.
Speaker 4: Some of the crested and florests picked them up, and
Speaker 4: I guess the new house sensation was born. And in
Speaker 4: the early twentieth century there was a rapport saying Boston ferns.
Speaker 4: There's over a million Boston friends being sold and grown.
Speaker 4: It's just the eastern side of us alone. So that
Speaker 4: was extremely popular ferns back then. I guess it's still
Speaker 4: pretty popular now.
Speaker 1: Are they hard to take care of?
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, maybe perhaps not so I started friends
Speaker 4: by killing them. Okay, I cannot grow furnishing the house.
Speaker 4: My wife used to just couldn't understand why a friend
Speaker 4: doctor keep killing her ferns.
Speaker 1: You're not uncomfortable with dead plants, obviously, because you're around
Speaker 1: all a lot. So there you go. It's like you
Speaker 1: understand the value of a dead plant. Also, a lot
Speaker 1: of people see a dead plant and they say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this is a tragedy. But you say, this is an
Speaker 1: opportunity to catalog it.
Speaker 4: It just if I'm good at it, I could have
Speaker 4: made a lot of money. So I don't know if
Speaker 4: you've seen the stackhorn ferns.
Speaker 1: So they're called staghorn ferns because they look kind of lowby,
Speaker 1: like reindeer antlers or a very large frize salad. And
Speaker 1: colonies of staghorn ferns in the wild can divide labor,
Speaker 1: with the upper fronds getting waxy and directing rainwater downward
Speaker 1: to spongy or staghorns below it, but not in the wild.
Speaker 1: Staghorns are the buzz of the plant world. There is
Speaker 1: a Better Home and Gardens article from August and it
Speaker 1: got except that it's hard to find a plant as
Speaker 1: controversial as the staghorn fern, it continued. While some adore
Speaker 1: its sculptural antler like Franz, others shy away from its
Speaker 1: prehistoric aesthetic. A recent glimpse into the terrace of Martha
Speaker 1: Stewart revealed a hanging staghorn fern as the ultimate natural
Speaker 1: statement piece center stage. So staghorns the fern.
Speaker 4: De jure, it's getting really parblay in Asia. So they
Speaker 4: usually are mounted on the on the wooden plaque and
Speaker 4: they have the angela shaped leaf coming out, so really
Speaker 4: like a deer mounted on the wall. I guess in
Speaker 4: Etsy you can get them for like twenty bucks. But
Speaker 4: recently in Taiwan there was a new variety of stackhorn
Speaker 4: ferns that was sold over three hundred thousand US dollars.
Speaker 4: Ah No, So there's a total staghorn firm craze fever
Speaker 4: in some part of Asian countries right now. So if
Speaker 4: I'm good at this, yeah, I mean I can make
Speaker 4: serious money, you.
Speaker 1: Can retire early. But I just volunteer at the lab.
Speaker 1: Just do it for the love of ferns. But just
Speaker 1: like from a yacht, are ferns getting kind of a
Speaker 1: comeback or are there people who are just like die hard,
Speaker 1: Like I'm a fern person and not an angio sporophile.
Speaker 1: Do ferends have their like street team that loves them?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So there's an American Friends Society and I'm currently
Speaker 4: the president elect of that society. It's so fun to
Speaker 4: be around with firm people. I mean in a potannical world. Wait,
Speaker 4: the firm people have the reputations of being really realthy
Speaker 4: and just like all stick to each other.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. I mean, you know, I almost named
Speaker 1: our dog Fern. I love the name Fern. Have you
Speaker 1: ever met anyone who's named fern? Is that a great name?
Speaker 4: It was, yeah, I I mean, we have a daughter,
Speaker 4: and then I'll proposed to my wife maybe we should
Speaker 4: admit them her ferns. But because I also been killing
Speaker 4: a lot of ferns in the house, so she doesn't
Speaker 4: there it's a it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: She's like, we'll name her Maggie. We'll never anything anything
Speaker 1: Daisy somebody.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something cannot be killed.
Speaker 1: What about you know? Speaking of dead ferns, like, how
Speaker 1: are they doing out there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a serious issues. There are a lot of
Speaker 4: endangered friend species. To give you an example, there's some
Speaker 4: Halloween just passed. But if you walk around southern Florida
Speaker 4: and you'll be very lucky to see a spooky green
Speaker 4: hands coming out from a palm trees, and those are
Speaker 4: like Carol glassa palmato. It's a very dangerous fern species
Speaker 4: in Florida and it looks just like a hands dangling
Speaker 4: down super cool. It's one of the reasons they got
Speaker 4: so dangerous because over collections, because it looks so weird,
Speaker 4: people want to collect them and then grow them. It
Speaker 4: just doesn't grow well outside of the native habitats. And
Speaker 4: obviously the theseconstructions of the swamps, the dranage of swamps
Speaker 4: also did Was it dinner help?
Speaker 1: Is there a way to try to cultivate those and
Speaker 1: reintroduce them or is that just really really hard to do?
Speaker 4: There are some progress. So in upside New York there's
Speaker 4: a very dangerous species go Asplanium scoopandrium. And this is
Speaker 4: a very common, commercially available fern species, but those are
Speaker 4: coming from Europe. So Europe have a different subspecies, and
Speaker 4: an American subspecies is extremely endangered. But anyway, there's been
Speaker 4: some process of reintroducing the native American ones to the habitat.
Speaker 1: And one twenty seventeen thesis I read, titled Experimental reintroduction
Speaker 1: of American hearts tongue fern Factors affecting successful establishment of
Speaker 1: transplants noted that the reintroduction success varied based on partly
Speaker 1: how robust and the little ferns were at the time
Speaker 1: of transplantation, and in the higher humidity sites they tended
Speaker 1: to fare better. And I looked up a twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five paper and it seemed to find that while still
Speaker 1: threatened in their native Northeast habitats, the transplant efforts have
Speaker 1: been working. So hooray for combating issues that we have caused. Obviously,
Speaker 1: every year ecology changes more and more, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: to think how much you know one type of plant
Speaker 1: can tell you about what's going on in the environment,
Speaker 1: you know, as a whole. And we have questions from listeners,
Speaker 1: can I ask you, yeah, yeah, okay, they have great questions,
Speaker 1: better than mine. And we will get to your questions
Speaker 1: patrons in a moment, but first, let's donate to a
Speaker 1: cause of the ologists choosing in this week. It's going
Speaker 1: to the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, which promotes research
Speaker 1: and teaching of taxonomy, systematics, and phylogeny of vascular and
Speaker 1: non vascular plants. And they provide early career bipock research
Speaker 1: grant funds, graduate student research grant funds, and more plus
Speaker 1: more resources, and it's a pleasure to support them on
Speaker 1: behalf of Doctor Lee and on behalf of Ferns the
Speaker 1: World Over, and that donation was made possible by sponsors
Speaker 1: of the show.
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Speaker 1: Okay, if you would like to ask a question of
Speaker 1: the ologist before we record, you can hop on over
Speaker 1: to patrion dot com slash ologies where you can join
Speaker 1: for as little as one dollar a month. And let's
Speaker 1: enter the overgrown forest of your questions. And let's see
Speaker 1: on the topic of cultivation, we were just talking about
Speaker 1: that goal next door Ashley doing Empress of small Wood
Speaker 1: and Mish the Fish wanted to know. Gooal next door said,
Speaker 1: I've tried to collect spores and grow them to absolutely
Speaker 1: no avail. Is this a losing battle or is it
Speaker 1: a skill issue? How can I grow myself a fern forest?
Speaker 1: And the Empress of small Wood want to know. Can
Speaker 1: you collect ferns spores to germinate more spores, more ferns.
Speaker 1: Someone else asked what they could do to prevent their
Speaker 1: native ferns from spreading through the rest of the garden.
Speaker 1: But that I imagine just like you gotta pluck them.
Speaker 1: The father of Mish the Fish looking at you and
Speaker 1: your ferns. If you want a fern goalie, can you
Speaker 1: try to make one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so to germany of the spores, you really
Speaker 4: want them to be on the really west surface, so
Speaker 4: it can you use a dow the contenter with some
Speaker 4: pe moss maybe and some really moist soil, and then
Speaker 4: you can sprinkle the ferns on top of them, keep
Speaker 4: the lid on so it's the whole environment is really humid,
Speaker 4: and hopefully that can get you some little fern gamo FTEs,
Speaker 4: so you'll see the fern gam to fight first. So
Speaker 4: those are like mossy things coming out from the grounds.
Speaker 4: They would not look like a fernce in the beginning. Ah,
Speaker 4: you'd be looking at like really filmy green sheets on
Speaker 4: the soil. But some friends have green spores, like the matusias,
Speaker 4: the ostrich ferns, they have green spores, which means that
Speaker 4: they have really bad shelf life. So if you want
Speaker 4: to collect the sports, you better germinate them right away.
Speaker 4: Just don't put them in their room temperature for too long.
Speaker 4: They will go bad.
Speaker 1: So do you kind of have to figure out which
Speaker 1: species you've got and then learn what works best for
Speaker 1: that species? Is it very a little bit?
Speaker 4: Definitely?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, yeah, yeah, Well on the topic of those,
Speaker 1: give me to FTEs Hi.
Speaker 4: This is Tommy and.
Speaker 5: Mackel Wrath.
Speaker 4: We want to know why ferns have done so well
Speaker 4: and lasted so long evolutionarily over the years.
Speaker 1: This is We're from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and many more of you,
Speaker 1: including Jenny You, Maddy, a good soup moth, Katie Muno's
Speaker 1: Brandahl scale, bar Amy Rugula, Clemens v Redhead scientist and
Speaker 1: Matchmidt from Wellington, New Zealand wanted to know what or
Speaker 1: how gametophytes give ferns a leg up in sexual reproduction. Thanks,
Speaker 1: what is it about them that has led to their survival?
Speaker 4: That's a great question. So fern spores can fly away
Speaker 4: really far. It can fly really far away, right, And
Speaker 4: then imagine you are a single spore just by yourself,
Speaker 4: and you landed in a remote islands and there's no
Speaker 4: one else there, and a spore with chimney into a
Speaker 4: gamto fights, and a gameto fights are typically hermaphroditic, so
Speaker 4: they have both male and female parts. So you can
Speaker 4: just self fertilize yourself and you become a new ferns.
Speaker 4: You don't need a nod pont in it, because a
Speaker 4: single sport can colonize the whole island, and that in
Speaker 4: a sense gives them a like help.
Speaker 1: Is there an issue then with whatever that reproduces, reproducing
Speaker 1: like with itself, does it become kind of cloned or
Speaker 1: is there like an issue with genetics?
Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah, it creates a lot of issues. Okay, because
Speaker 4: you're self fertilized, where you lose all the genetic diversity
Speaker 4: that way, the hedrozygosity that way, so you are completely homozygous.
Speaker 4: There's no diversity in your genome. Every single locus they
Speaker 4: are SAMD.
Speaker 1: So imagine an unrelated egg meets a stranger's fern sperm,
Speaker 1: and you've got a lot of variation, a lot of
Speaker 1: combos happening because they're heterozygous, they're different. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: mixing with your own DNA homozygous, you might have some
Speaker 1: weak spots where your haploid communified DNA is doubling up
Speaker 1: with itself in the diploid phase. Also, good job for
Speaker 1: knowing what all those terms means. Look at how far
Speaker 1: we've come.
Speaker 4: So that's problematic in a long run. But if you
Speaker 4: want to just colonize somewhere really fast, you got it.
Speaker 1: Gets the job done. Yeah, and Matt Schmidt was from
Speaker 1: New Zealand. Have you been to New Zealand? No, me neither.
Speaker 4: It's a great place to look at ferns. They have
Speaker 4: so many cool friends in New Zealand's.
Speaker 1: That's what's my next question. Andy Pepper, Zizz, Sarah Man's,
Speaker 1: Fiona Roggi, Addie Cappello, all these people asked about New
Speaker 1: Zealand and ferns. Ziz said, I'm so excited, omg as
Speaker 1: a Kiwi, why do New Zealand forests have so much
Speaker 1: silver fern when I've never even heard of tree ferns
Speaker 1: anywhere else. Sarah said, please talk about New Zealand ferns.
Speaker 1: And then also Addie Cappello wanted to know culture wise,
Speaker 1: like they've spent time in New Zealand and says that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ferns integrated into the culture there
Speaker 1: and so what is it about New Zealand Why is
Speaker 1: their fern game? I'm so strong.
Speaker 4: I wish I'll work in New Zealand's as a firm biologist.
Speaker 4: You know Soler friends right, it's everywhere. It's only the
Speaker 4: national The New Zealand has fronds on them. The Rocky
Speaker 4: Bik teams have the firm leave on the Jersey. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: And according to the Museum of New Zealand, yes, ferns
Speaker 1: are a big deal. They're on military tombstones, they're on
Speaker 1: sports uniforms, coats of arms, currency, and though I have
Speaker 1: never been to New Zealand, I imagine they're everywhere in
Speaker 1: like cool murals and bus stops and clip art and everything.
Speaker 1: Now of particular acclaim are the black fern and the
Speaker 1: silver fern, the latter called pongo to Maori folks, which
Speaker 1: is native only to New Zealand and which can grow
Speaker 1: into this hairy kind of scaly tree trunk several stories tall.
Speaker 1: And New Zealand it's just lousy with ferns. Ferns everywhere
Speaker 1: in the best way. Does New Zealand just have like
Speaker 1: great habitat for ferns.
Speaker 4: Yes, And also they have really odd ferns, I guess
Speaker 4: probably because it was isolated a bit on the rest
Speaker 4: of the world. Some weird ferns, you know, really appear
Speaker 4: as in that place.
Speaker 1: And so kind of like what you were saying with
Speaker 1: a spore lands on an island turns into a commutiphy
Speaker 1: then they can just colonize. They can just boom. So
Speaker 1: if they're in this sort of remote location, then you
Speaker 1: might just get all kinds of evolution from that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, the kind of adapt to the via specific habitats.
Speaker 4: And PEF's interesting myphology.
Speaker 1: What about invasive ones? Reese Parini justin Bowen, I'll be listening,
Speaker 1: Lisa Gorman Potato Puffer and Earl of Gramblecan wanted to
Speaker 1: know in Reese's words, are there invasive ferns? And I
Speaker 1: know we mentioned earlier that that person's dad was like,
Speaker 1: how do I get rid of some of the native ferns?
Speaker 1: Take it over my garden because they're so good at
Speaker 1: that reproduction? Are there ever? Like, whoa, we got too
Speaker 1: many of this fern here?
Speaker 4: There are several really nasty ferns. So there's one species
Speaker 4: called like Goldia microphyllum is native in Asia, but Florida
Speaker 4: is cling forest. Man, this is weird ferens. So it's
Speaker 4: a climbing ferns. So they wrap around trees and they
Speaker 4: go up and a single leaf, the whole thing is
Speaker 4: a single leaf. So they have the longest leaf on
Speaker 4: these planet because that whole thing is a single leaf,
Speaker 4: and they go up the trees and they strangle the trees.
Speaker 1: Oh, each front of this old world climbing fern, which
Speaker 1: can smother whatever was growing underneath. Its canopy can be
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five feet long. South Florida hates
Speaker 1: these things.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's a it's a horrible hobo ferns. But
Speaker 4: in the native habitats they are well behaved, just for
Speaker 4: some reasons. Oh they arrive Florida in one while bright
Speaker 4: So that's one. There's another friend species called Salvena molasta
Speaker 4: i guess as an um, implying molossa. It's a not
Speaker 4: a not a good ferns, just aquatic ferns that floats
Speaker 4: on top of water. It's native in Brazil and it
Speaker 4: has caused billions of dollars of damage around the world
Speaker 4: in Australia and Africa. It just blocked the waterways. It
Speaker 4: can just cover the entire lake and then choke whatever
Speaker 4: is fish down there. It's a serious problem. Some ferns
Speaker 4: are not nice.
Speaker 1: Some ferns are like, that's it taken over. There's my
Speaker 1: tree now, Florida. Florida has some issues with pythons and
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff. It's wild down there. Florida's just
Speaker 1: its own science experiment in terms of what's going on
Speaker 1: down there.
Speaker 4: Well, but there are some weedy ferns that kind of
Speaker 4: maybe can save the Earth a bit. So this a
Speaker 4: fern called azola. It's also aquatic ferns. They float around.
Speaker 4: Fifty million years ago, you know, Earth was a much
Speaker 4: warmer place and the Arctic was actually a big freshwater
Speaker 4: lake and there was a huge Azola bloom during that time.
Speaker 4: And with the geologists estimated that during that Azola bloom,
Speaker 4: that fern bloom in the Arctic water they see crashed
Speaker 4: over one trillion tons of carbon dig side and that
Speaker 4: was hypothesized to facilitate the earth transition from that warmer
Speaker 4: climates to a now cooler environments. Right now the Arctic
Speaker 4: is frozen mostly for now. So yeah, they they have
Speaker 4: played big roles, their weediness have played big roles in
Speaker 4: earth geological history.
Speaker 1: You mentioned something about the fern that can climb trees
Speaker 1: and tree climbing ferns and a bunch of people Cynthia
Speaker 1: b Ellis Sugarman, Earl of Gramulican Mad's first time question
Speaker 1: asker Jmo and Cynthia Ze Cynthia's see all caps, all caps,
Speaker 1: three exclamation points. Please tell me more about ant ferns.
Speaker 1: I fell in love instantly with Lecinopteris genus mecanopteras. Yeah,
Speaker 1: currently grow a few species. How did they co evolve
Speaker 1: with ants? Can they substitute the role of ants with fertilizer?
Speaker 1: Do they host bugs other than ants? Mads wanted to know.
Speaker 1: Do ferns have a symbiotic relationship with other animals or plants?
Speaker 1: So you know we're talking about some ferns live on
Speaker 1: trees as semions others working with ant alliances. What's going on? First?
Speaker 1: Let's talk about ant ferns because I have no idea
Speaker 1: what Cynthisia is talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so like anopster is that the mentions have a
Speaker 4: really interesting rhizome structures. So usually rhizome is really like
Speaker 4: a thing like a pencil right on the only grounds
Speaker 4: running on trees. Well, a rhizome of n ferns like anopters,
Speaker 4: it's like a maze is like a balloon and has chambers.
Speaker 4: They have different places and the ants will live inside
Speaker 4: the rhizomes. And so ferns are providing a really comfy
Speaker 4: place for ants to live, and the ants job is
Speaker 4: to protect the ferns. So if there's any aphists some
Speaker 4: other insects want to eat the ferns, the ants will
Speaker 4: fight them off. So it's some of some milder interactions.
Speaker 4: And the cool thing about this is this evolved multiple
Speaker 4: times in ferns evolutionary histories. Another fern genus called Solinopteris
Speaker 4: so Solnopterrius solenium. The rhizome like a tomato size like
Speaker 4: a tomato, and again similar things. The ants will chew
Speaker 4: into the big rhizome and they live inside the rhizomes
Speaker 4: again for protections.
Speaker 1: That's so cool that it's like a condo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. And some ferns have nectar, so they have
Speaker 4: either a very specialized nectary structures or sometimes just sequete
Speaker 4: really sugar liquids. Again, they enticing ends to come over.
Speaker 4: I'm hoping they will be their bodyguard. I need you here.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of other plants that they like
Speaker 1: to live with, do climbing ferns benefit some trees? Are
Speaker 1: there other plants that like to grow near ferns because
Speaker 1: they do a certain thing to the soil or do
Speaker 1: they do? Ferns have friends?
Speaker 4: I guess, oh, yeah, they have friends. So in the neotropics.
Speaker 4: Right in Central America or South America, you have bromliads,
Speaker 4: the big pineapple things on the trees, right, the pineapple
Speaker 4: things they kind of like upside down cats, and they
Speaker 4: will collect a lot of leaders. So those are in
Speaker 4: the neotropics. In in Asian tropics you have the burn
Speaker 4: nest ferns. They look kind of similar. They have big
Speaker 4: leaves and they're overlapping leafs, so they collect a lot
Speaker 4: of leaf leaders on the trees. And because of that,
Speaker 4: some frogs like to live on those, specifically on those ferns,
Speaker 4: and a lot of insects like to live in the habitat.
Speaker 4: Orchids also like to hanging down from those burnes ferns.
Speaker 4: And the Azola friends I mentioned right, the one that
Speaker 4: cool on Earth, they have a very specific centobacteria that
Speaker 4: live inside of them, so the sanabacter the philosymphatic center bacteria.
Speaker 4: They can fix nitrogens, meaning they can turn national gas
Speaker 4: into ammonia, and only a few bacteria can do that.
Speaker 4: And essentially Azola ferns have their own fertilizers, so they
Speaker 4: carry their symbiotics bacteria with them. They can live in
Speaker 4: a really low nirogen environment and the Asian farmers have
Speaker 4: figured out how to use this. So before they plant
Speaker 4: the rice, they will floods the rice patties and they
Speaker 4: will put a zoo and the zula will grow and
Speaker 4: they will fix nitrogen fulia symbotics and it bacteria, and
Speaker 4: they will drain the water and azula will come down
Speaker 4: to the soil and it will decompose release all the
Speaker 4: fixed nitrogens and then they'll plan the rice.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 4: So this is a very clever way to boost their productivity.
Speaker 1: It's like its own plant fertilizer. Thanks for that. It's
Speaker 1: like miracle grow or something. But for bigger scale, what
Speaker 1: about size? Like Mouse Paxton, Marissa Jacobsen, Rhese Parini, Ranger France,
Speaker 1: Jenna Congdon, Lunar Crumpet, Sustainable Cirenian, Amelia Dhaff Jamie b
Speaker 1: All these people wanted to know about giant ferns. Amelia
Speaker 1: Dahoff said, are giant ferns a newer development than the
Speaker 1: rest of our fern species? Are they an og when
Speaker 1: it comes to size? Like? What's up with giant ones?
Speaker 4: The biggest one I think would be the tree ferns. Oh, okay,
Speaker 4: the silver ferns in New Zealand those are tree ferns.
Speaker 4: They have tree fern forests, which is awesome. And the
Speaker 4: trunk of those tree ferns they don't have woods, so
Speaker 4: they don't produce any woods at all. The thing you
Speaker 4: see on the trunk is actually roots. So imagine a
Speaker 4: fern growing up and when they're growing up, the atpax
Speaker 4: will actually shoot down roots from the top and the
Speaker 4: roots will serve as a support structures. And that's how
Speaker 4: the tree trunk is made. In tree ferns, it's mostly
Speaker 4: just roots. Oh wow, the stemmy self is not actually
Speaker 4: very big, and those roots are really strong roots. They's
Speaker 4: just now the wimpy roots you see. They are really
Speaker 4: reinforced roots with lots of fibers in them.
Speaker 1: What about let's see fractal pattern m Rothamel, Paulina Tar,
Speaker 1: Kayleie Bell, Claire Isshy. Wanted to know Claire says fern math,
Speaker 1: Fibonacci sequence, Barnsley fern. Why are these plants so mathematical?
Speaker 1: And yeah, why do you fern? And wanted to know
Speaker 1: embody fractal patterns, what's going on there?
Speaker 4: Gosh, this is a question I don't know how to answer.
Speaker 4: There was a paper exactly about this. It's a paper
Speaker 4: by Sandy Hefflerington from Enninbo. They have a beautiful paper
Speaker 4: about the mathematics in math and fossil.
Speaker 1: Ferns, and for more on this you can see the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five paper Identification of a tetrahedral appical cell
Speaker 1: preserved within a fossilized fern fiddle head, where doctors Raphael
Speaker 1: Cruz and Sandy Heatherington looked at a three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen million year old fern fossil and they concluded that
Speaker 1: fiddleheads have been around for a long time and that
Speaker 1: fern leaves evolved through the modification of shoots, and the
Speaker 1: spirals in nature may have evolved simply because it's a
Speaker 1: very efficient packing method, So think about that next time
Speaker 1: you organize your sock drawer. Also, if you're a fractiphile
Speaker 1: and you can't get enough of the seemingly infinite repeating
Speaker 1: patterns of fern leaves, I would like to direct you
Speaker 1: to the nineteen eighty eight book Fractals Everywhere by a
Speaker 1: mathematician named Michael Barnsley, who has a fractal named after him,
Speaker 1: and it's also named after a fern. It's the Barnsley
Speaker 1: fern fractal, and models of it look like a fern leaf.
Speaker 1: But if you're a terodologist, you would say best resembles
Speaker 1: a black spleenwort naturally. Also, I know that approximately all
Speaker 1: percent of you are listening just waiting to find out
Speaker 1: why your fern is dead, maybe your doctor Lee's wife.
Speaker 1: So me, not being a terodologist or even an owner
Speaker 1: of a single fern, did spend some time asking the
Speaker 1: Internet why you suck at ferns, and I gathered the
Speaker 1: following tips. So, ferns like humidity, so keep them in
Speaker 1: a bathroom with a window, but not in a bathroom
Speaker 1: without a window. They need to be somewhere with light.
Speaker 1: They don't actually grow well in basements, but not too
Speaker 1: sunny or you might scorch them. So if you have
Speaker 1: a south or a westward facing windows, set them back
Speaker 1: a few feet from it missed them. Water them when
Speaker 1: the soil is dry. You might have stick your finger
Speaker 1: in there like every day to check. But water from
Speaker 1: the roots and not the crown. And also, if your
Speaker 1: fern is brown and brittle, you probably underwatered it. And
Speaker 1: if your fern just fucking sucks and it's shedding leaves
Speaker 1: and you can't keep it alive. It might be a
Speaker 1: Boston fern, which some fern enthusiasts seem to hate because
Speaker 1: they are cheap, they are abundant, and they are an
Speaker 1: easy thing to kill. So everyone thinks all ferns are
Speaker 1: bad houseplants, but it may just be that they got
Speaker 1: a bad Boston. Also, we have an amazing Domestic Pathophytology
Speaker 1: episode with Tyler Thrasher about why your houseplants are dead
Speaker 1: and how to keep them alive, and I suggest you
Speaker 1: have a listen. It's great. Tyler is very passionate about
Speaker 1: your houseplants and judgmental, but it's good. Okay, moving onward.
Speaker 1: This is a very very technical, scholastic question. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if you're going to be able to answer it.
Speaker 1: Coca wants to know. I really want a fern tattoo.
Speaker 1: Does theologists have one? It's actually not a hard question.
Speaker 1: Wants to know if you have a fern tattoo.
Speaker 4: I do not have a friend tattoo.
Speaker 1: If you had to get a fern tattoo, if they
Speaker 1: were like, listen, if you want to fund your lab,
Speaker 1: you have to go get a fern tattoo, right, now
Speaker 1: or your lab is going to close. Dout what fern
Speaker 1: would you get a tattoo of?
Speaker 4: I will get a Lady Gaga front tattoo, and then
Speaker 4: maybe I want to show way to Lady Gaga saying please.
Speaker 1: Fund my lab. Good gosh, Stephanie, fund the lab. Okay,
Speaker 1: So no fern tattoos. Do any of your grad students
Speaker 1: or post docs anyone have fern tattoos?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah they do.
Speaker 4: There would show off their friend tattoos. Yeah, lift their
Speaker 4: shut saying hey see what I got. But I mean,
Speaker 4: if you want to get a temporary one, there's a
Speaker 4: cool way to do it. So earlier I mentioned there
Speaker 4: some ferns live in the desert, right, and one adaptations
Speaker 4: they have is they produce a lot of foreigner So
Speaker 4: those are little white color or yellow colored powders on
Speaker 4: the leave. So if you find a nice ferns in
Speaker 4: the desert and then flip it over it and you
Speaker 4: see it's bright yellow, bright white, pick it up, and
Speaker 4: then you can put on your pants, put on our
Speaker 4: shorts in and smash it. And then they will leave
Speaker 4: the impressions of that farina on your shirts or pants,
Speaker 4: and this beautiful, beautiful.
Speaker 1: And it's temporary, and it's free.
Speaker 4: It's temporary. Yeah, just don't do it in a national park.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, don't do it a national park and maybe
Speaker 1: draw ferns. You could always draw ferns too. You could
Speaker 1: take a sharpie and draw fern on you see how
Speaker 1: you like it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What about Matt's and cast the dog nerd row and tree,
Speaker 1: Danny C? Murder Burder, so many people Ella raptor Sustainable, Cibernian,
Speaker 1: I want to know if you have a favorite fern.
Speaker 1: Danny C wants to know what's the prettiest fern in
Speaker 1: your opinion. I know this is really putting you on
Speaker 1: the spot because there's so many ferns that are gonna
Speaker 1: be like, oh, really interesting, But do you have a
Speaker 1: favorite fern that you just are like close to your heart?
Speaker 4: I cannot answer that question. It's like was your favorite sheld?
Speaker 4: Kind of questions.
Speaker 1: No, no, they're all good. Okay, what about smell again,
Speaker 1: Addie Cappello Matt Mesnick first question asker Brenna Hall wanted
Speaker 1: to know. Brenna said, why do ferns have that incredible
Speaker 1: fern smell? And Matt Mesnick's wife said, why do you
Speaker 1: crush up ferns smell so delicious.
Speaker 4: Okay, so the first question is, I don't know how
Speaker 4: kind of knows this prison house but never to get
Speaker 4: the fern smell. Recently got a kenneth apology that has
Speaker 4: a label as a fern. But now look at an
Speaker 4: ingredient has no ferning it and it doesn't smell like
Speaker 4: a I don't know. But then the crossed ferns. Yes,
Speaker 4: So there's a species called hay sended ferns and it's
Speaker 4: famous for you know, you across it and the cross
Speaker 4: on leaves you have the hay scenter smell. But that's
Speaker 4: very specific for this fern species. Some ferns they are sweet,
Speaker 4: so if you want to taste it. There's a species
Speaker 4: called Polypodium glaci riizon. So glacs rihizo means sugar rhizome
Speaker 4: and it has like licorice taste to it. In a
Speaker 4: flour of North America. If you look at the keys
Speaker 4: how to identify the species, there's a few notes about
Speaker 4: different species would taste different, so you have to chew
Speaker 4: the raizmes and then remember the taste, and then that's
Speaker 4: how you identify the species.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like when geologists are out there licking
Speaker 1: rocks a little bit. You know, have geologists like relate
Speaker 1: rocks to be like this one's salty, but definitely make
Speaker 1: sure that you know what you're munching on before, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What about touch response? Jessica Dube Manatee Lover and Freddie
Speaker 1: and Eli want to know what makes certain ferns react
Speaker 1: so quickly? How come not all of them can? But
Speaker 1: Jessica Dubey asked, what causes some of them to close
Speaker 1: up when they're touched?
Speaker 4: Okay, so they are not ferns. It's a ligum plans.
Speaker 4: So here you go.
Speaker 1: There you go, mistaken identity?
Speaker 4: Right, Well, that they do have that factory dissector leaves,
Speaker 4: so I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1: Is that What is the name of that leaf structure?
Speaker 1: Is it pinnate or es?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Okay. One person wanted to know. Laurel said, how do
Speaker 1: I become ferns after I die? Especially if they're surrounded
Speaker 1: by big moss and trees? Like if you wanted to
Speaker 1: die and then come a bunch of ferns? Is there
Speaker 1: a place where you should ask for your body to
Speaker 1: be deposited? Do you go and go? You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Go to New Zealand, New Zealand. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: die in New Zealand. Yeah, okay, New Zealand. There you go,
Speaker 1: So get a passport to New Zealand. Walk into the
Speaker 1: woods when it's your time. But not before. Alyssa wanted
Speaker 1: to know because I know that your parents were like
Speaker 1: amazing and got you field guides. Alyssa Diodado wants to
Speaker 1: know if you have any favorite field guides or fern books.
Speaker 1: Has anyone just like absolutely knocked it out of the
Speaker 1: park with a fern book. This is a trick question.
Speaker 4: One.
Speaker 5: Well, there you go, like mine, Wow, that's naous.
Speaker 4: It's right here if you want to.
Speaker 1: See, Yes, there you go. Okay, get your book. The
Speaker 1: book is called Ferns Lessons in Survival from Earth's Most
Speaker 1: Adaptable Plants, and it has chapters on ferns, on Trees,
Speaker 1: Ferns as Trees, Desert Ferns, Ferns and Animals, Humans and Ferns,
Speaker 1: the Past and the Future of ferns. And it is
Speaker 1: just an elegant and gorgeously illustrated book. It belongs on
Speaker 1: your coffee table or under a holiday tree. We'll link
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. Top shelf fer and book also, but.
Speaker 4: In terms of field guide, there was a new one
Speaker 4: by Emily sess Off on you a Potechnical Garden, and
Speaker 4: that's a beautiful friend guide. You should you should get h.
Speaker 1: Does zach Eliphanachus know of your work?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, I think someone needs to tell him.
Speaker 4: I know his work, I know his work. He doesn't
Speaker 4: know my.
Speaker 1: You need to get him a copy of your book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't have it, Yeah, I want him to
Speaker 1: sit between two copies of your Fern.
Speaker 4: Book and I interview lated Gaga.
Speaker 1: Yes, an intermulated god out. You can be on set
Speaker 1: as a consultant.
Speaker 4: I mean, the federal funding is going away and we
Speaker 4: all need money to do research. Yeah, so whatever it takes, man, whatever.
Speaker 1: It takes, whatever it takes, we'll send it up the chain.
Speaker 1: Or like if anyone listening to this, no sex, Helpanacus
Speaker 1: and or.
Speaker 5: Lady guys, please please research.
Speaker 1: Well that you know the last questions I always ask
Speaker 1: her what is the hardest part of your about your job?
Speaker 1: And right now federal funding is in the toilet and
Speaker 1: things are in absolutely bonkers. We got climate change. Uh,
Speaker 1: what's the hardest part about what you do or what's
Speaker 1: gotten harder or what is there something that's just annoying.
Speaker 4: I think funding is has been more and more difficult.
Speaker 4: We spend a lot of time writing proposals and sometimes
Speaker 4: we got it's really good feedback finding sf us Dade
Speaker 4: those federal agencies, and they they just don't have enough
Speaker 4: money to fund all the good research projects. And you know,
Speaker 4: some frind research can really change things. Right, the insect
Speaker 4: sidal things I mentioned earlier right as has actual practical
Speaker 4: translations into agriculture. Some people are studying symbolysis with center
Speaker 4: back to our. How if we can engineer symbolysis of
Speaker 4: center back to our with some corn plants maybe or
Speaker 4: rice plants, that will also change how we do our agriculture.
Speaker 4: So a lot of this have real translations to to
Speaker 4: real world. And also friend diversity is going away because
Speaker 4: all the things you mentioned we do really need to
Speaker 4: understand their diversity before they disappeared. And those kind of
Speaker 4: research is really hard to get funding. So they gaga,
Speaker 4: if you are listening, help us out.
Speaker 1: What about the best thing? What do you love like?
Speaker 1: What keeps you going?
Speaker 4: So I guess the discovery I also working with people
Speaker 4: as a really awesome lab and It's really fun talking
Speaker 4: to them. I think what makes science great is the people.
Speaker 4: It's great to nerd out together.
Speaker 1: And I love that fern people are rowdy and stick together.
Speaker 1: That's so great. And there's gonna be people listening to
Speaker 1: this who are like, I'm a fern person and I
Speaker 1: never knew that there were other fern people out there that.
Speaker 4: I can well join. American Friends Society.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, get your book. This is amazing. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this. This is just one
Speaker 1: of my favorites. I think your book should be a
Speaker 1: holiday gift for anyone who likes to playing. Thank you,
Speaker 1: get the book. So ask fantastic people for reals, not
Speaker 1: smart questions, because they may have the same questions on
Speaker 1: their mind. And please grab a copy of doctor Lee's book,
Speaker 1: Fern's Lessons in Survival from Earth Most Adaptable Plants, which
Speaker 1: we will link in the show notes for you, alongside
Speaker 1: more of his research. We have a ton more links
Speaker 1: up at aliboard dot com slash ologies slash territology. We're
Speaker 1: at ologies on Instagram a Blue Sky, I'm at ali
Speaker 1: Ward on both we have shorter kid friendly episodes of
Speaker 1: ologies called smologies SMO l O g i E s
Speaker 1: available wherever you get podcasts. They're in their own separate feed.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to and Ologies merch is at ologiesmerch
Speaker 1: dot com, and you can join our Patreon for a
Speaker 1: dollar at patreon dot com. Slash Ologies. Aaron Talbert admins
Speaker 1: the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts.
Speaker 1: Kelly arndwired as a website. Noel Dilworth keeps us evolving
Speaker 1: through time as scheduling producer Managing director. Susan Hale is
Speaker 1: the fractal path that moves us forward. Jake Chafey edits
Speaker 1: our massive genome of audio alongside lead editor and always
Speaker 1: nature adjacent Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn unfurled
Speaker 1: the theme music. And if you stick around to the
Speaker 1: end of the episode, I will tell you a secret
Speaker 1: from my sometimes a shamed brain this week. It's that
Speaker 1: I was away for our Ologies live show in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: a couple weeks ago, and then I went straight to Lisbon.
Speaker 1: I left the country for six days for a friend's
Speaker 1: wedding and it was wonderful, and then I came back
Speaker 1: it was Thanksgiving. My point is my inbox is a mess.
Speaker 1: It's so bad. It's just a tangled understory of branches
Speaker 1: and dead stuff and leaf litter and pythons and strangling vines.
Speaker 1: I have so many emails to return. It's just frightening. Honestly, word,
Speaker 1: you're playing with fire here, So if I owe you
Speaker 1: an email, I swear today's the day. Also, I have
Speaker 1: never seen The Ferngully, which everyone wants to know about,
Speaker 1: everyone has questions about. It's the nineteen ninety two animated classic.
Speaker 1: Your friend Wikipedia just told me that it was Robin
Speaker 1: williams first animated film ever, and that quote. Williams provided
Speaker 1: fourteen hours of improvised lines for the part, which had
Speaker 1: been originally conceived as an eight minute row. Fourteen hours
Speaker 1: of improv I can't even imagine the vibe in the
Speaker 1: room fourteen hours, and I can't return an email. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a Faber pacidermatology, homeology or do zoology, lithology, zoology, meteorology, paratology, ephology, ceiology, seminology,
Speaker 1: killed ferne get value.
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