Pteridology (FERNS) with Fay-Wei Li

Fronds. Forest dwellers. Spores. Houseplants. Queer icons. We’ve got ferns. The charming and hilarious professor and author of “Ferns: Lessons in Survival from Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants,” Dr. Fay-Wei Li, tells me all about fern evolution, what ferns not to have in your house, the most expensive ferns, the tastiest ferns, mathematical mysteries, and a genome that makes no sense, to me or a lot of Pteridologists. Also, can Between Two Ferns save science? This episode is, in Fay-Wei’s words, “ferntastic.”

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, hey, it's your old roommate who always found the best furniture on the side of the road, Ally Ward. Did you know that you love ferns? Not yet. Sit tight. You're about to. I'm gonna tell you, one person who loves ferns, it's this guest. In fact, I first saw this ologist in this quick video about ferns, and they were wearing a shirt that said, "I heart ferns," but the heart was a fern gamete fight. You're gonna find out everything about that later. And they said that ferns were fern-tastic. This is in the first five seconds of the video, and I was like, "They're on." And they wrote the 2025 book Ferns: Lessons in Survival from the Earth's Most Adaptable Plants. And they're an associate professor at Cornell's Boyce Thompson Institute.

• 0:42Alie Ward?

  They got their PhD in ferns at Duke University, where they're also a scholar in residence. And we'll talk about their stories, and their history, and their deep love of ferns in a moment. But first, thank you to everyone who supports the show via patreon.com/ologies, where you can join for $1 a month, and you can leave questions for the ologists ahead of time. Thank you to everyone out there in Ologies merch via ologiesmerch.com. Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews for the show, which helps so much, such as this recent one from PT Bunch, who said that "Ologies makes me happy to be alive in an infinitely interesting world with infinitely curious and generous ologists." PT, happy to have you here. And Blue Dot Rose, happy to have you and your sister here in spirit. Okay. Thank you also to sponsors of Ologies, who for years have made it possible for us to

• 1:27Alie Ward?

  donate to a cause or two each week.

• 1:31Alie Ward?

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• 2:15Alie Ward?

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• 2:36Alie Ward?

  Ugh, trips are full of unexpected discoveries. Maybe you see a sea slug, or you find out that your friend still sleeps with a stuffed animal. But when it comes to your vacation rental, there should not be any surprises. When you book a Verbo vacation rental, if what you expect isn't what you get, Verbo Care has you covered. If something's broken or just not right, Verbo will work to make it right. Plus, you get 24/7 live human support with every booking. Grab your stuffy, we're going on vacay. So book today on the Verbo app. If you know, you Verbo. Terms apply. See verbo.com/trust for details. Okay, let's jump into pterodology. So the petr comes from the Greek word for a wing or a feather.

• 3:19Alie Ward?

  So like pterodactyl or helicopter. Helico, which means spiral, and petr, which means wing. So if you didn't know, yeah, the petr in helicopter is its own word in there. It's weird. But ferns, they look feathery, so people who study them are officially on record as pterodologists. And so let's illuminate the shadowy world of ferns to hear about their long evolution. What ferns not to have in your house? Icons to fern scientists: haploid, diploid, spore packets. Do they have roots? How ferns can teach us about sexual identity? The most expensive ferns, the tastiest ferns, the trendiest ferns, mathematical mysteries,

• 4:00Alie Ward?

  and a genome that makes no sense, to me at least, with the absolutely charming, enthusiastic scholar, professor, researcher, fern advocate, and pterodologist Dr. Fei Wei Li.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Feyweli, Ihim.

• 4:33Alie Ward?

  Where are you right now?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  I'm right now in North Carolina. I'm actually in the process of moving my lap to Duke University.

• 4:40Alie Ward?

  Does North Carolina have good ferns? I feel like, I don't even know if North Carolina has ferns.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, North America in general is not a great place to find ferns. The most exciting place in North America to find ferns is in the desert.

• 4:54Alie Ward?

  What? No.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Arizona, for example, has one of the highest fern diversity.

• 5:01Alie Ward?

  I thought ferns needed a lot of darkness and water. And those are like two things Arizona does not have.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Well, so they have what we call a calenfoid ferns. They are desert ferns. They adapted to this really dry environment and they really took advantage of it and took off. They diversify so much diversity there.

• 5:21Alie Ward?

  What do they look like?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Usually they look really crispy. They can lose their water up to 90% and they can still come back alive. So if you, for example, have a hike in the deserts in Arizona, Texas, whatever, you see some crispy ferns, put them in a ziplock bag or pour some water over it. They might come back, just green it up.

• 5:43Alie Ward?

  Oh, my gosh. Does moss do that as well? Can't moss like dehydrate and rehydrate a lot?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. In many ways, they're like mosses, they had resurrection ferns. They look dead, but then they still can come back.

• 5:57Alie Ward?

  What a name, what a compelling name, like zombie coming back from the dead. When I think of a fern, I think of these dark forests and I think of like deep gullies and streams and wetness and stuff, but.

• 6:13Alie Ward?

  What exactly is a fern? Like, they're a plant, but they're not like normal plants, right? Not like the plants we're used to?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there are many ways to define a fern. You can define it by looking at what it doesn't have. They don't have seeds, they don't produce flowers. But the most definitive way to define a fern is their sex life.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Let me hear it.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, they don't have flowers, right? And flowers where the sex happens. The sperm will fertilize the egg. Has you have the next generations. Ferns don't have flowers. And the fern you see outside are diploids. They have two set of chromosomes, like flowering plants and humans, for example. But they have this entirely different generations that we call the gametophyte phase. And a gametophyte is a haploid?

• 6:58Alie Ward?

  So diploid, de, two, means two copies of a gene. And haploid means one copy. Most of your cells are diploid, but gamete cells, like sperm and egg, are haploid because they're going to hook up with each other. So ferns have this stage, gametophites, which means like a sexy plant. And it's easy to remember because gametophites typically look like little green hearts? Or sometimes they look like an oven mitt, which I guess is sexy, depending on who, where the person is wearing the oven mitt. But yeah, gametophites, structures of sexual independence.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  And they're independent. They live outside of the diploid ferns. They're green. They're usually super tiny, smaller than your fingernails, for example. And this is where the sex happens in ferns, not in the flowers, but in the gametophyte phase.

• 7:48Alie Ward?

  And does that come out as the spores? That you see that powdery brown stuff on the back of the leaves?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So the spores were germinating to gametophites. And the gametophites are free living. They will produce egg and sperms, and they will fertilize and then become a zygote. And a zygote will become, you know, the ferny ferns you see outside. So they basically have two independent generations, the haploid phase and the diploid phase.

• 8:17Alie Ward?

  And is this an older type of reproduction? Or is it just divergent evolution? Or is this something that's kind of ancestral?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Only in ferns, you have this two separate generations living independent with each other. And that's what make them unique. That that's exactly defines a fern.

• 8:36Alie Ward?

  What is their basic?

• 8:38Alie Ward?

  Anatomy, do they have a rhizome or do they have roots? If you had to like, give the basic parts of a fern?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Okay, so I guess the taxiferns will have a horizontal rhizome. And the rhizome we can think about is a stem. And then you have leaf, which is the fern fronds coming out. And then beneath it, you have the roots. So a rhizome, a stem, roots coming down and a leaf coming out.

• 9:03Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  That's a basic principle there. And the roots are true roots. Uh, they are not like a bryophyte roots, which is a rhizoids.

• 9:11Alie Ward?

  Oh, okay. So that's a misconception that they don't have roots.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Hmm, they have proper vasculatures in their root system.

• 9:17Alie Ward?

  Nice. So yes, ferns have roots, but they also have rhizomes that act like a stem. But they look kind of like a clumpy knob at the base of the fronds. And then below the rhizome, you have the actual roots of the plant. Obviously with over 10,000 species of ferns, we're not going to discuss every fern. But we can get the broad strokes, especially between the mossy or bryophyte looking little gametophytes, which are tiny, and the frond looking adult sporophytes.

• 9:48Alie Ward?

  I love also that you call them mossy mosses and ferny ferns.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:53Alie Ward?

  To get an idea of like what they look like.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  And the fern gametophytes, where the haplophytes, they do look in many ways like a bryophytes.

• 10:02Alie Ward?

  And we had a great episode about moss a few years ago. And I'd never considered what their life cycle was like, or, or how rich and diversity they are. And how you can go up close to one and just see so much that you would overlook unless you had a loop and stuff. But have you always been like a plant person? Or did you get into this via the spore angle? Or what, what made it so that you are an expert in, you're a? Terodologist.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  I'm a terodologist.

• 10:32Alie Ward?

  Yes, yes.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  So I grew up in Taiwan. There's just so many fern diversity in Taiwan. So to put into perspective, Taiwan has 800 fern species. Taiwan is like a third of, a third size of New York State. The whole North America has only 400 species. So this tiny island has double of fern diversity compared to USA. And so I just really got really fascinated about the diversity of ferns. My parents have a little cabin in the woods. And I spent a lot of time in the forest looking around and just realized there's so many of them. And I just wanted to identify them, learn more about them. And that's how I've become hooked with ferns.

• 11:16Alie Ward?

  Did your parents get you plant books? And were they, did you come back to the house with all these plants?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  They did, they did. They gave me many field guides and that's, yeah.

• 11:31Alie Ward?

  I feel like with ferns, there is something really beautiful about doing spore pressings and like the preservation. Do you find when you're doing this research, do you have to go back in archives to see specimens that were collected a long time ago that are pressed? How are you even researching and cataloging them?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, we use Herbarium a lot. So Herbarium is like a library of dead plants. It's really a magical place. So it's a place you basically have physical plant materials from around the world and from different plant lineages. And you just go to different cabinets and you can pull them out, you can look at them very closely. And so we spent a lot of time in Herbarium, looking for characters, trying to identify different species of ferns. We also were able to find some new species just by looking at the old Herbarium specimens.

• 12:23Alie Ward?

  No. How do you tell? Are you able to take a little fragment of it and do any DNA now on it? To

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Exactly. That's the beauty of herbarium specimens. They preserve so much information. The DNA you can get, or we can get DNA from specimens as old as over 100 years old specimens. And they have the locality, we know where they come from. They have the spores, right? We can look at the spore morphology. So yeah, herbarium is very important for botanical research. And in the past, we have discovered several new species. So before you discover something new, right? You got a chance to name it.

• 12:59Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, one time we discovered a new genus and my advisor and I would decide to name it after Lady Gaga. So the genus is called Gaga.

• 13:12Alie Ward?

  No.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:14Alie Ward?

  That's amazing. Was your advisor a Lady Gaga fan? Or did you know that like this is a good move for ferns?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  She's, she's a deep Lady Gaga fan. The two things we talked about when I was a graduate student is her cat and Lady Gaga's newest album.

• 13:34Alie Ward?

  Did Lady Gaga ever find out about that?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yes, she was interviewed several times and people asked her about the Gaga ferns. And yeah, she acknowledged this and the Gaga ferns would describe, they have a really odd reproductive methods. And they bypass a lot of sexual reproductions. And so Lady Gaga made a comment about the Gaga ferns, saying they are sexless.

• 13:58Alie Ward?

  And one of the researchers spearheading this 2012 naming was Dr. Kathleen Pryor, who was inspired in part by this sequined, light sea foamy green and heart shaped bodysuit that the pop star had performed in. And also, the DNA of this genus of 19 different ferns has some repeating pairs of G A G A or Gaga. And Dr. Pryor also said that the naming was in honor of Lady Gaga's, quote, fervent defense of equality and individual expression. And that they think her sex Second album Born This Way is enormously empowering, especially for disenfranchised people in communities like LGBTQ,

• 14:39Alie Ward?

  ethnic groups, women, and, she added, scientists who study odd ferns. And while Lady Gaga has identified as bisexual, she's also been quick to note that she doesn't represent the LGBTQ plus community and just speaks up for equity and freedom of sexual expression. And there were also, earlier in her career, rumors of her being trans, and her response was usually along the lines of, so what if I were? So fern cometafights make male and female sex cells proof that nature is not on a binary.

• 15:13Alie Ward?

  And so now you're saying that they have kind of like a sexless reproduction, but I'm wondering, like, because the spores always get me with ferns. I think that's one of the things that's most interesting. When you are like looking at spores, say, under a microscope, do they have a lot of different morphologies that determine what happens in their different, like, diploid and haploid phases? Or is a spore is a spore is a spore? Do they all look the same?

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Spores contain a lot of information. Different species, different genera have really different ornamentations. Sometimes they have pores on the spore walls, and those are very important characters. And the size are important, too. Many ferns like to become polyploids, so they duplicate their genomes pretty often. So have four copies of chromosomes. Many of them even have 12 copies of chromosomes. And when they do that, their spores become very big. So we can measure the spore size as a proxy of how many set of chromosomes they have in a genome.

• 16:14Alie Ward?

  So to recap, those little bumps on the underside of a fern leaf, those are called sorae. And each one has little orbs, which in turn house the spores. And when the time is right, the spores pop out like someone from a giant birthday cake, and they find a wet spot to germinate into that cometafite with little root-like rhizoids. And these can make the haploid sperm or eggs. And when a sperm finds an egg through a Film of water, then you get the diploid parts of the life cycle as the fern leaves begin to sprout and grow. The gametophyte shrivels up at the base. As that fern plant begins to grow up, the cycle starts again. But yes, chromosomes in ferns, it turns out, can be wild.

• 17:00Alie Ward?

  And do people who are researching ferns, such as yourself and your lab, are you going about it from that genomics? Are you in it for the chromosomes and the reproduction cycle? Or are a lot of pterodologists in conservation and taxonomy of it? What makes a fern person kind of come alive with the research?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in the past, we've done many different aspects of fern biology. We've done some taxonomy, we've described species, looking at how those different species relate to each other. And nowadays, we focus a lot on their genomic side. You know, ferns are weird. There's a fern species called Ophioclostrum reticulatum. It has 1,400 chromosomes.

• 17:44Alie Ward?

  What?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  So humans have 46, right?

• 17:48Alie Ward?

  What?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  And then this guy has 1,400 chromosomes. And I was like, why? Why do they do that? And their genomes are huge as well. So, you know, DNA is composed of ATGC, right? Four different letters. And humans, for example, have like three billions of different letters.

• 18:06Alie Ward?

  So most humans have 46 chromosomes, 23 pairs. And each chromosome in humans can have up to 300 million base pairs. And the base pairs are the rungs of that spiral ladder of DNA. And A pairs with T, C pairs with G. So our genome contains over 3 billion base pairs of those letters.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  But this fern species has 160 billion letters. Like a lot bigger than a human genome. Why? Right? And that's something we want to figure out. Why do I do this?

• 18:42Alie Ward?

  So unraveling that DNA mystery, that's in the future of ferns. But what about tales of ferns past?

• 18:50Alie Ward?

  Were they one of the earlier plants? When we see drawings of like dinosaurs surrounded by ferns, is that pretty accurate? Did they predate flowers by a lot, like flowering plants?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Well, ye- yes, I know. So ferns are both really old and also really young.

• 19:07Alie Ward?

  Tell me everything you know.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  They are old in a sense. You can trace the whole lineage back to Carboni Forest, like three hundred million years ago. And that is the time that ferns really dominated Earth. The coals we're burning now are coming from ferns and their ancient relatives. So you can think about ferns are fueling the civilizations of of human beings.

• 19:29Alie Ward?

  Wow.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Anyway, so they dominate Earth. And then in Cretaceous, like a hundred million years ago, flowering plants come along. And they are bad. They are bullies. They push ferns out. So they become the dominant actors of the forest. And ferns have to figure out what to do next. So they went understory. And they kind of staged a comeback when they were understory. And they adapted to a really lowland environment. And they flourished and they diversified in a lowland environment. So most of the fern species, most of the fern lineage we see today are actually really young, younger than the flowering plants.

• 20:10Alie Ward?

  Oh, because they had to adapt to it.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. We call them like diversifying in the shadow of angiosperms, in the shadow of flowering plants.

• 20:17Alie Ward?

  Wow.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they're young.

• 20:20Alie Ward?

  I had no idea. I always thought that they had been around forever and it must have just been darker then, which is not right. So ferns themselves have been on Earth for four hundred million years. But they have adapted to temperature fluctuations and they've kind of rebranded as understory, low-light champions in some cases, once the angiosperms or the flowering plants came in and ruined their whole vibe. Do you get a chance to go back to Taiwan? And are you just like ferns, ferns, ferns, ferns? Do you go back and you're just like, ah, finally, some good ass ferns?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Every time, the sheer number of species just blew me away again and again. Walking the trail, you see a hundred of species. It's fantastic. One thing I miss a lot in Taiwan is the food. And you can find fiddleheads in Taiwan and then people cook it. And it's pretty common and they are really, really delicious.

• 21:20Alie Ward?

  What's the best way to eat a fiddlehead?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Because I need to clarify, so not all fiddleheads are edible.

• 21:28Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Some are alright, toxic and carcinogenic. In eastern US, you, in the spring, you will go out and pick fiddleheads, right? So just make sure that you pick the right ones, don't pick the toxic one.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  But the fiddleheads we eat in the US, for example, is the, the species called Metusia struthiopterus. The common name is ostrich ferns. And the best way to cook it, I think, is, um, first you need to blanch them. They're very tanning, a lot of tanning, and you just wanna get rid of them. And then I will add some butter, some fiddleheads, some shrimps, some pasta, together, mix it up. It's, it's good, it's crunchy, but also a bit slimy. So it's like really interesting balance that I really like.

• 22:17Alie Ward?

  Kind of like okra, like a little bit, have you ever had okra?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Okra is too slimy, but I think fiddlehead is, yeah, like the crunchy bit is better.

• 22:27Alie Ward?

  Do a lot of animals go out munching on fiddleheads? Who eats ferns in terms of like evolution?

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Ferns are famous for not being eaten.

• 22:37Alie Ward?

  Really?

• 22:38Speaker 01

  So I, I mentioned some fiddleheads, some ferns are toxic, right? And they are toxic for reasons, they, they don't want to be eaten. Ferns are also very famous for having very little herbivory.

• 22:49Alie Ward?

  What does that mean?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Don't get eaten, uh, they, um, very little insect eat them.

• 22:54Alie Ward?

  Oh, okay.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  So if you, if you go out, right, again, go on a hike, look at all the fern fronds, they're usually intact. And if you look at the flowering plants, the sometimes got chewed up pretty badly. And so the comparisons, the contrast is pretty, pretty striking. And the really cool thing about this is you can take advantage of this. So there's a big seed company called Corteva, um, they produce a lot of corns and soybeans in the US. And they got really interested in ferns because they realized no one eat ferns, but why? Right? And so they developed very sophisticated screening pipeline. So they're able to identify a number of insect cyto proteins from ferns.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  And they were able to put this in corns. And the, their new generation of corn is super resistant to a lot of like form army worms and, and so on. So. Probably in the future, maybe the corns you are eating has a bit of fern DNA in it.

• 23:56Alie Ward?

  Like kind of transgenic.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:59Alie Ward?

  Kind of, so you're eating a little bit of fern DNA, which then, does that mean that they can use fewer insecticides?

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:06Alie Ward?

  And pesticides on it?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  That's, that's the whole point.

• 24:09Alie Ward?

  Wow. I mean, you'd think ferns have so many genes to spare, you know? They have so many eggs for some of them. They're like, take a couple, we're fine. You guys have 40, we're fine. Yeah. What about when it comes to ferns in the media? Fern Gully, Land Before Time? Have you seen either of these? Do you ever notice ferns in like animation and you go, that fern wouldn't be there?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  To be honest, I've, I've heard about those movies, but never watched them. I didn't grow up in the US, right?

• 24:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  But, but um, Between Two Ferns, that's, I guess that's the, the one I know.

• 24:46Speaker 04

  I'm your host, Keanu Reeves. I'm your host, Zach Galifianakis. And my guest today is Keanu Reeves. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me here. On a scale of one to a hundred, how many words do you know? One to a hundred? Do you know 50 words? Do you know 75 words?

• 25:06Speaker 01

  They're funny as hell.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  So ferns in Between Two Ferns, right? The two ferns that sit on the sides, they are Nephilimis codifolia. So the common name of it is Boston ferns. Or sometimes called the sword ferns. And Boston ferns are kind of, they are the most widely cultivated ferns in the entire world. It's so popular. And the origins of Boston ferns is a bit unclear, but it was hypothesized that there was a shipment of ferns from Europe in the late, late 19th centuries. And that shipment contains a lot of really weird variety of Boston ferns. And some of them are streeped, some of them are highly dissected, some are like crested.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  And a florist picked them up and I guess a new houseplant sensation was born. And in the early 20th century, there was a report saying Boston ferns, there's over a million Boston ferns being sold and grown in just the eastern side of the US alone. So that was extremely popular ferns back then. And still, I guess it's still pretty popular now.

• 26:19Alie Ward?

  Are they hard to take care of?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, maybe, perhaps not. So I studied ferns by killing them.

• 26:30Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  I cannot grow ferns in the house. But my wife is just couldn't understand why a fern doctor keep killing her ferns.

• 26:43Alie Ward?

  Well, you're you're not uncomfortable with dead plants, obviously, because you're around a lot. So there you go. It's like you understand the value of a dead plant also. A lot of people see a dead plant and they say, oh, no, this is a tragedy. But you say, this is an opportunity to catalog it.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  It just, if I'm good at it, I could make a lot of money. So I don't know if you've seen the stag horn ferns.

• 27:11Alie Ward?

  So they're called stag horn ferns because they look kind of loby, like reindeer antlers or a very large frise salad. And colonies of stag horn ferns in the wild can divide labor with the upper fronds getting waxy and directing rainwater downward to spongier stag horns below it. But not in the wild. Stag horns are the buzz of the plant world. There was a Better Home and Gardens article from August, and it gossiped that it's hard to find a plant as controversial as a stag horn fern. It continued, while some adore its sculptural antler-like fronds, others shy away from its prehistoric aesthetic. A recent glimpse into the terrace of Martha Stewart revealed a hanging stag horn fern

• 27:56Alie Ward?

  as the ultimate natural statement piece, center stage. So stag horns, the fern de jour.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  It's getting really popular in Asia. So they usually are mounted on the on the wooden plaque and they have the antler-shaped leaf coming out. So really like a deer mounted on the on the wall. I guess in Etsy you can get them for like 20 bucks. But recently in Taiwan, there was a new variety of stag horn ferns that was sold over 300,000 US dollars.

• 28:33Alie Ward?

  No.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  So there's a total stag horn fern craze fever in some part of Asian countries right now. So if I'm, if I'm good at this.

• 28:45Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  I mean, I can make serious money.

• 28:48Alie Ward?

  You could retire early.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  But I'm not.

• 28:51Alie Ward?

  You can just volunteer at the lab, just do it for the love of ferns, but just like from a yacht. Are ferns getting kind of a comeback? Or are there people who are just like diehard, like I'm a fern person and not an angiosporophile? Do ferns have their like street team that loves them?

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so there's a American fern society and I'm currently the president-elect of that society. It's so fun to be around with fern people. I mean, in a botanical world, we, the fern people have the reputations of being really rowdy and just like all stick to, to each other.

• 29:34Alie Ward?

  That's so cool. You know, I almost named our dog Fern. I love the name Fern. Have you ever met anyone who's named Fern?

• 29:45Alie Ward?

  Isn't that a great name?

• 29:46Speaker 01

  It was, yeah. I, I mean, we have a daughter and then I proposed to my wife, maybe we should name it them ferns. But then because I also been killing a lot of ferns in the house, so she doesn't think it's a, it's a good idea.

• 30:06Alie Ward?

  She's like, we'll name her Maggie, we'll name her anything, anything, Daisy, something.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something cannot be killed.

• 30:15Alie Ward?

  What about, you know, speaking of dead ferns, like how are they doing out there?

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a serious issues. There are a lot of endangered fern species. To give you an example, there's um, Halloween just passed. But if you walk around Southern Florida and you'll be very lucky to see a spooky green hand coming out from a palm trees. And those are like caroglasa palmata. Uh, it's a very endangered fern species in Florida. And it looks just like a hand dangling down. Super cool. It's one, one of the reasons they got um, so endangered is because over collections. Because it looks so weird, people want to collect them and then grow them. It, it just doesn't grow well outside of the native habitats.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  And obviously, the disconstructions of the swamps, the drainage of swamps also did, also didn't help.

• 31:10Alie Ward?

  Is there a way to try to cultivate those and reintroduce them? Or is that just really, really hard to do?

• 31:19Speaker 01

  There, there are some progress. Um, so in upstate New York, there's a very endangered species called Asplandium scolopandrium. And this is a very common commercially available fern species. But those are coming from Europe. So Europe have a different subspecies. And the American subspecies is extremely endangered. But anyway, uh, there's been some process of reintroducing the Native American ones to the, to the habitats.

• 31:47Alie Ward?

  And one twenty seventeen thesis I read titled Experimental Reintroduction of American Heart's Tongue Fern: Factors Affecting Successful Establishment of Transplants noted that the reintroduction success varied based on partly how robust and the little ferns were at the time of transplantation. And in the higher humidity sites, they tended to fare better. And I looked up a twenty twenty five paper and it seemed to find that while still threatened in their native Northeast habitats, the transplant efforts have been working. So hooray for combating issues that we have caused. Obviously, every year ecology changes more and more. And it's interesting to think how much.

• 32:31Alie Ward?

  You know, one type of plant can tell you about what's going on in the environment, you know, as a whole. And we have some questions from listeners. Can I ask you? Yeah. Yeah, okay. They have great questions, better than mine.

• 32:46Alie Ward?

  And we will get to your questions, patrons, in a moment, but first, let's donate to a cause of the ologists choosing. And this week, it's going to the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, which promotes research and teaching of taxonomy, systematics, and phylogeny of vascular and nonvascular plants. And they provide early-career BIPOC research grant funds, graduate student research grant funds, and more, plus more resources. And it's a pleasure to support them on behalf of Dr. Lee and on behalf of ferns the world over. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show. How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all

• 33:28Alie Ward?

  of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have, or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build

• 34:12Alie Ward?

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• 34:57Alie Ward?

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• 35:41Alie Ward?

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• 37:04Alie Ward?

  Okay, if you would like to ask a question of the ologist before we record, you can hop on over to patreon.com/ologies where you can join for as little as $1 a month. And let's enter the overgrown forest of your questions.

• 37:18Alie Ward?

  And let's see, on the topic of cultivation, we were just talking about that ghoul next door, Ashley doing Empress of Smallwood and Mish the Fish wanted to know, ghoul next door said, "I've tried to collect spores and grow them to absolutely no avail. Is this a losing battle or is it a skill issue? How can I grow myself a fern forest?" And Empress of Smallwood wanted to know, "Can you collect fern spores to germinate more spores? More ferns?" Someone else asked what they could do to prevent their native ferns from spreading through the rest of the garden, but that I imagine just like, you gotta pluck them.

• 37:57Alie Ward?

  The father of Mish the Fish looking at you and your ferns.

• 38:01Alie Ward?

  If you want a fern ghoulie, can you try to make one?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so to germinate the spores, you really want them to be on a really wet surface. So you can use a delicate container with some pea moss, maybe, and some really moist soil. And then you can sprinkle the ferns on top of them and keep the lid on. So it's the whole environment is really humid. And hopefully that can get you some little fern gammon fights. So you'll see the fern gammon fight first. So those are like mossy things coming out from the grounds. They would not look like a ferns in the beginning. You'll be looking at like really filmy green sheets on the soil.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  But some ferns have green spores, like the Methusias, the ostrich ferns, they have green spores, which means that they have really bad shelf life. So if you want to collect the spores, you better germinate them right away. Just don't put them in the room temperature for too long. They will go bad.

• 39:02Alie Ward?

  So do you kind of have to figure out which species you've got and then learn what works best for that species? Is it vary a little bit?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 39:10Alie Ward?

  Yeah, okay.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:11Alie Ward?

  Well, on the topic of those gammon fights.

• 39:13Speaker 07

  Hi, this is Tommy and Mackelwraith. We want to know why ferns have done so well and lasted so long evolutionarily.

• 39:25Speaker 07

  Uh, over the years, uh, this is, we're from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

• 39:28Alie Ward?

  And many more of you, including Jenna Yu, Maddie A, Good Soup, Moth, Katie Munoz, Brenn Hall, Scale Bar, Amy Arugula, Clemens V, Redhead Scientist, and Matt Schmidt from Wellington, New Zealand, wanted to know

• 39:41Speaker 08

  what or how gametophites give ferns a leg up in sexual reproduction. Thanks.

• 39:49Alie Ward?

  What is it about them that has led to their survival?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  That's a great question. So fern spores can fly away really far, can fly really far away. Right. And then imagine you're a single spore just by yourself. And you landed in a remote island and there's no one else there. And a spore would germinate into a gametophite. And gametophites are typically hermaphroditic, so they have both male and female parts. So you can just self-fertilize yourself and you become a new fern. You don't need another partner. Because a single spore can colonize the whole island. And that in a sense gives them a leg up.

• 40:30Alie Ward?

  Is there an issue then with whatever that reproduces reproducing like with itself? Does it become kind of cloned or is there like an issue with genetics?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, it creates a lot of issues.

• 40:44Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Because you self-fertilize, where you lose all the genetic diversity that way, the heterozygosity that way. So you're completely homozygous. There's no diversity in your genome. Every single locus, they are same.

• 41:00Alie Ward?

  So imagine an unrelated egg meets a stranger's fern sperm. And you've got a lot of variation, a lot of combos happening because they're heterozygous. They're different. Now, if you're mixing with your own DNA, homozygous, you might have some weak spots where your haploid gametophite DNA is doubling up with itself in the diploid phase. Also, good job for knowing what all those terms mean. Look at how far we've come.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  So that's problematic in the long run. But if you want to just colonize somewhere really fast, you got it.

• 41:31Alie Ward?

  Gets the job done.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:32Alie Ward?

  And Matt Schmidt was from New Zealand. Have you been to New Zealand?

• 41:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:39Alie Ward?

  Me neither.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  It's a great place to look at ferns. They have so many cool ferns in New Zealand.

• 41:45Alie Ward?

  That was my next question. Andy Pepper, Ziz, Sarah Mans, Fiona Rogi, Addie Capello, all these people asked about New Zealand and ferns. Ziz said, I'm so excited, OMG, as a Kiwi, why do New Zealand forests have so much silver fern when I've never even heard of tree ferns anywhere else? Sarah said, please talk about New Zealand ferns. And then also Addie Capello wanted to know, culture-wise, like, they've spent time in New Zealand and says that there's a lot of ferns integrated into the culture there. And so what is it about New Zealand? Why is their fern game so strong?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Oof. I wish I worked in New Zealand as a fern biologist. You know, silver ferns, right? It's everywhere. It's on the national, the area of New Zealand has fern fronds on them. The rugby teams have the fern leaf on their jersey. It's amazing.

• 42:42Alie Ward?

  And according to the Museum of New Zealand, yes, ferns are a big deal. They're on military tombstones, they're on sports uniforms, coats of arms, currency. And though I have never been to New Zealand, I imagine they're everywhere in like cool murals and bus stops and clip art and everything. Now, of particular acclaim are the black fern and the silver fern, the latter called Pongo to Maori folks, which is native only to New Zealand and which can grow into this hairy, kind of scaly tree trunk, several stories tall. And New Zealand, it's just lousy with ferns. Ferns everywhere, in the best way. Does New Zealand just have like great habitat for ferns?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. And also they have really odd ferns. I guess probably because it was isolated a bit from the rest of the world, some weird ferns, you know, really appear in that place.

• 43:39Alie Ward?

  And so kind of like what you were saying, if a spore lands on an island, turns into a commetified, then they can just colonize, they can just boom. So if they're in this sort of remote location, then you might just get all kinds of evolution from that?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. They can adapt to the very specific habitats and have interesting morphology.

• 44:03Alie Ward?

  What about invasive ones? Reese Perini, Justin Bowen, Valby Listening, Lisa Gorman, Potato Puffer, and Earl of Grammalkin wanted to know, in Reese's words, are there invasive ferns? And I know we mentioned earlier that that person's dad was like, how do I get rid of some of the native ferns taking over my garden? Because they're so good at that reproduction, are there ever like, whoa, we got too many of this fern here?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  There are several really nasty ferns. So there's one species called Ligonomycrophile. It's native in Asia, but in Florida is killing forests. Man, this is weird fern. So it's a climbing fern, so they wrap around trees and they go up. And the single leaf, the whole thing is a single leaf. So they have the longest leaf on this planet because that whole thing is a single leaf. And they go up the trees and they strangle the trees.

• 44:59Alie Ward?

  Oh. Each frond of this old world climbing fern, which can smother whatever was growing underneath its canopy, can be 125 feet long. South Florida hates these things.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it's a horrible, horrible ferns. But in their native habitats, they are well behaved just for some reasons. When they arrive Florida, they went wild.

• 45:21Alie Ward?

  Spring break.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  So that's one. There's another fern species called Salvina molasta. I guess as an M. implying molassa is not a, not a good fern. This is aquatic ferns. They float on top of water.

• 45:36Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  It's native in Brazil, and it has caused trillions of dollars of damage around the world, in Australia, in Africa. It just blocked the waterways. It can just cover the entire lake and then choke whatever's fish down there. It's a serious problem. Some ferns are not nice.

• 45:59Alie Ward?

  Some ferns are like, that's it, taking over. This is my tree now, Florida. Florida has some issues with pythons and all kinds of stuff. It's wild down there. Florida is just its own science experiment in terms of what's going on down there.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Well, but there are some weedy ferns that kind of maybe can save the earth a bit. So there's a fern called azula. It's also aquatic ferns. They float. Around 50 million years ago, you know, the earth was a much warmer place. And the Arctic was actually a big freshwater lake. And there was a huge azula bloom during that time. And was the geologists estimated that during that azula boom, that fern bloom in the Arctic water, they sequestered over 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide. And that was hypothesized to facilitate the earth transition from that warmer climates to a now cooler environments, right?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Now the Arctic is frozen mostly. For now. So, yeah, they they have played big roles. Their weediness have played a big roles in earth geological history.

• 47:11Alie Ward?

  You mentioned something about the fern that can climb trees and tree climbing ferns. And a bunch of people, Cynthia B., Ellis Sugarman, Earl of Grammalkin, Mads, First Time Question, Oscar, JMo, and Cynthia Z.

• 47:23Alie Ward?

  Cynthia Z, all caps, all caps, three exclamation points. Please tell me more about ant ferns. I fell in love instantly with Lecanopterus genus.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Lecanopterus, yeah.

• 47:37Alie Ward?

  Currently grow a few species. How did they co-evolve with ants? Can they substitute the role of ants with fertilizer? Do they host bugs other than ants? Mads wanted to know, do ferns have a symbiotic relationship with other animals or plants? So, you know, we're talking about some ferns live on trees as symbionts, others working with ant alliances. What's going on? First, let's talk about ant ferns because I have no idea what Cynthia Z is talking about.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so so like anopters that um the mentions have a really interesting rhizome structures. So usually rhizome is really like a thing, like a pencil, right?

• 48:16Alie Ward?

  Um hum.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Running on grounds or running on trees. But the rhizome of ant ferns like anopters, it's like a maze. It's like a balloon and has chambers. They have different places and the ants will live inside the rhizomes. And so ferns are providing a really comfy place for ants to live. And the ants' job is to protect the ferns.

• 48:39Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  So if there's any aphids, some other insects wanna eat the ferns, the ants will fight them off. So it's kind of a symbiotic interactions. And the cool thing about this is this evolved multiple times in ferns evolutionary histories.

• 48:53Alie Ward?

  Um hum.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  There's another fern genus called Solenopterys. So Solenopterys solenum, the rhizome like a tomato.

• 49:02Alie Ward?

  Um hum.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Size like a tomato. And again, similar things, the ants will chew into the big rhizome and they live inside the rhizomes. Again, for protections.

• 49:12Alie Ward?

  That's so cool that it's like a condo.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And some ferns have nectar, so they have either a very specialized nectary structures or sometimes just sequets, really sugary liquids. Again, they're enticing ants to come over and hoping they will be their bodyguard. I need you here.

• 49:31Alie Ward?

  And then in terms of other plants that they like to live with, do climbing ferns benefit some trees? Do are there other plants that like to grow near ferns because they do a certain thing to the soil? Or do they do ferns have friends, I guess?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, they have friends. So in the neotropics, right, in Central America or South America, you have bromeliads, the big pineapple things on the on the trees, right? The pineapple things, they kind of like upside down cats and they will collect a lot of leaders.

• 50:05Alie Ward?

  Um.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  So those are in the neotropics. And uh in Asian tropics, you have. The bird nest ferns, they look kind of similar. They have big leaves and they're overlapping leaves. So they collect a lot of leaf leaders on the trees. And because of that, some frogs like to live on those, specifically on those bird nest ferns. And a lot of insects like to live in a habitat. Orchids also like to hanging down from those bird nest ferns. And the azula ferns I mentioned, right? The one that cooled on the earth. They have a very specific cyanobacteria that live inside of them.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  So the cyanobacteria, the photosynthetic cyanobacteria, they can fix nitrogen, meaning they can turn nitrogen gas into ammonia. And only a few bacteria can do that. And essentially azula ferns have their own fertilizers. So they carry their symbiotic bacteria with them. They can live in a really low nitrogen environment. And the Asian farmers have figured out how to use this. So before they plant the rice, they will flood the rice paddies and they will put azula there. And azula will grow and they will fix nitrogen through their symbotics and the bacteria. And then it will drain the water and azula will

• 51:32Speaker 01

  come down to the soil and it will decompose, release all the fixed nitrogen. And then they'll plant the rice.

• 51:38Alie Ward?

  Ah.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  So this is a very clever way to boost their productivity.

• 51:44Alie Ward?

  It's like its own plant fertilizer. Thanks for that. It's like Miracle Grow or something, but for a bigger scale. What about size? Like Mouse Paxton, Marissa Jacobson, Reese Perini, Ranger France, Jenna Congdon, Lunar Crumpet, Sustainable Cyrenian, Amelia DeHoff, Jamie B. All these people wanted to know about giant ferns. Amelia DeHoff said, are giant ferns a newer development than the rest of our fern species? Or are they an OG? When it comes to size, like what's up with giant ones?

• 52:14Speaker 01

  The biggest one I think would be the tree ferns.

• 52:17Alie Ward?

  Oh, okay.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  The silver ferns in New Zealand, those are tree ferns. They have tree fern forests, which is awesome. And the trunk of those tree ferns, they don't have roots, so they don't produce any roots at all.

• 52:30Alie Ward?

  Hmm.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  The thing you see on the trunk is actually roots. So imagine a fern growing up, and when they're growing up, the epax will actually shoot down roots from the top.

• 52:42Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  And the roots will serve as the support structures. And that's how the tree trunk is made in tree ferns. It's mostly just roots.

• 52:52Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  The stem itself is not actually very big.

• 52:55Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And those roots are really strong roots. They're just not the wimpy roots you see. They're reinforced roots with lots of fibers in them.

• 53:05Alie Ward?

  What about, let's see, fractal pattern? M. Rothamell, Paulina Tarr, Kaylee Bell, Claire Rishi, wanted to know, Claire says fern math? Fibonacci sequence? Barnsley fern? Um, why are these plants so mathematical? And yeah, why do ferns, M. wanted to know, embody fractal patterns? What's going on there?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Gosh, this is a question I don't know how to answer. There was a paper exactly about this. It's a paper by Sandy Heatherington from Edinburgh. They have a beautiful paper about the mathematics in math in fossil ferns.

• 53:44Alie Ward?

  And for more on this, you can see the 2025 paper, Identification of a Tetrahedral Apical Cell Preserved Within a Fossilized Fern Fiddlehead, where doctors Raphael Cruz and Sandy Heatherington looked at a 315 million year old fern fossil, and they concluded that fiddleheads have been around for a long time, and that fern leaves evolved through the modification of shoots. And the spirals in nature may have evolved simply because it's a very efficient packing method. So think about that next time you organize your sock drawer. Also, if you're a fractophile and you can't get enough of the seemingly infinite repeating patterns of fern leaves, I would like to direct you to them. 1988 book Fractals Everywhere by a mathematician named Michael Barnsley,

• 54:29Alie Ward?

  who has a fractal named after him, and it's also named after a fern. It's the Barnsley fern fractal, and models of it look like a fern leaf. But if you're a terodologist, you would say best resembles a black spleen wart naturally. Also, I know that approximately all percent of you are listening, just waiting to find out why your fern is dead. Maybe your Dr. Lee's wife. So me not being a terodologist, or even an owner of a single fern, did spend some time asking the internet, why you suck at ferns? And I gathered the following tips. So ferns like humidity, so keep them in a bathroom with a window, but not in a bathroom without a window. They need to be somewhere with light. They don't actually grow well in basements.

• 55:14Alie Ward?

  But not too sunny, or you might scorch them. So if you have a south or a westward facing window, set them back a few feet from it. Mist them, water them when the soil is dry. You might have to stick your finger in there like every day to check. But water from the roots and not the crown. And also, if your fern is brown and brittle, you probably underwatered it. And if your fern just fucking sucks and it's shedding leaves and you can't keep it alive, it might be a Boston fern, which some fern enthusiasts seem to hate because they are cheap, they are abundant, and they are an easy thing to kill. So everyone thinks all ferns are bad houseplants, but it may just be that they got a bad Boston.

• 55:57Alie Ward?

  Also, we have an amazing domestic pathophytology episode with Tyler Thrasher about why your houseplants are dead and how to keep them alive. And I suggest you have a listen. It's great. Tyler is very passionate about your dead houseplants and judgmental, but it's good. Okay, moving onward. This is a very, very technical scholastic question. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to answer it. Coco wants to know, I really want a fern tattoo. Does theologist have one? It's actually not a hard question. Wants to know if you have a fern tattoo.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  I do not have a fern tattoo.

• 56:29Alie Ward?

  If you had to get a fern tattoo, they were like, listen, if you want to fund your lab, you have to go get a fern tattoo right now.

• 56:41Alie Ward?

  Or your lab is gonna close down. What fern would you get a tattoo of?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  I would get a Lady Gaga fern tattoo and then maybe I would show it to Lady Gaga saying, "Please."

• 56:52Alie Ward?

  Fund my lab.

• 56:56Alie Ward?

  Gaga, Stephanie, fund the lab.

• 57:01Alie Ward?

  Okay, so no fern tattoos. Do any of your grad students or postdocs, anyone have fern tattoos?

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:08Alie Ward?

  Yeah, they do?

• 57:09Speaker 01

  They will show off their fern tattoos. Yeah, they will lift their shirt saying, "Hey, see what I got."

• 57:16Speaker 01

  But, I mean, if you wanna get a temporary one, there's a cool way to do it.

• 57:21Alie Ward?

  How?

• 57:21Speaker 01

  So, earlier I mentioned there are some ferns live in the desert, right? And one adaptations they have is they produce a lot of farina. So those are little white color or yellow color powders on the leaf. So, if you find a nice ferns in the desert and you flip it over and you see it's bright yellow or bright white, pick it up and then you can put on your pants, put on your shorts and you smash it. And then they will leave the impressions of that farina on your shorts or pants. And this is beautiful. It's beautiful.

• 57:59Alie Ward?

  And it's temporary and it's free.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It's temporary, yeah. Just don't do it in a national park.

• 58:05Alie Ward?

  Yeah, okay, don't do it in a national park. And maybe draw ferns. You could always draw ferns too. You could take a Sharpie and draw fern on you, see how you like it.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:15Alie Ward?

  What about Mads and Cast the Dog Nerd, Rowan Tree, Danny C, Murder Burger, so many people?

• 58:25Alie Ward?

  Ella Raptor, Sustainable Cyrenian.

• 58:27Alie Ward?

  I wanna know if you have a favorite fern. Danny C wants to know what's the prettiest fern in your opinion. I know this is really putting you on the spot because there's so many ferns that are gonna be like, "Oh, really? Interesting." But do you have a favorite fern that you just are like, "Oh, close your heart"?

• 58:44Speaker 01

  I cannot answer that question. It's like, "Who's your favorite child?" kind of questions. No.

• 58:48Alie Ward?

  No, they're all good. Okay, what about smell? Again, Addie Capello, Matt Meznik, first question asker. Brenna Hall wanted to know, Brenna said, "Why do ferns have that incredible fern smell?" And Matt Meznik's wife said, "Why do crushed up ferns smell so delicious?"

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Okay, so the first question is I I don't know what kind of nose this person has, but I never been able to get the fern smell. Ah, we recently got a candle for anthropology that has a label as a fern, but I look at the ingredient, it has no fern in it and doesn't smell like a fern. I don't know. But then the crushed ferns, yes, so there's a species called hay-scented ferns. And it's famous for, you know, you hike across it and then the crossing leaves, you have the hay-scented smell. But that's very specific for that fern species. Some ferns, they they are sweet. So if you want to taste it, there's a species called Polypodium glycerizon.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  So glycerizon means sugar rhizome. And it has like licorice taste to it. In the floor of North America, if you look at the keys, how to identify the species, um, there's a a few notes about different species would taste different. So you have to chew the rhizomes and then remember the taste. And then that's how you identify the species.

• 1:00:15Alie Ward?

  It's kind of like when geologists are out there licking rocks a little bit. You know how geologists like lick rocks to be like, this one's salty. But definitely make sure that you know what you're munching on beforehand, right? Yeah.

• 1:00:29Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:00:30Alie Ward?

  What about touch response? Jessica Dube, Manatee Lover and Freddie and Eli want to know what makes certain ferns react so quickly? How come not all of them can? But Jessica Dube asked, what causes some of them to close up when they're touched?

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Okay, so they are they are not ferns. They are mimosa. It's a legume plant. So here you go.

• 1:00:53Alie Ward?

  There you go. Mistaken identity, right?

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Well, they do have that fatery dissect the leaves. So so I guess, yeah.

• 1:01:03Alie Ward?

  Is that, what is the name of that leaf structure? Is it pinate or?

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Mm hmm, mm hmm. Pinat, pinatified, yes.

• 1:01:10Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Alie Ward?

  One person wanted to know, Laurel said, how do I become ferns after I die? Especially if they're surrounded by big moss and trees like if you wanted to die and then become a bunch of ferns. Is there a place where you should ask for your body to be deposited? Do you go and go, you know what I mean?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  I will go to New Zealand.

• 1:01:33Alie Ward?

  New Zealand, yeah.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Just die in New Zealand.

• 1:01:36Alie Ward?

  Die in New Zealand, yeah. Okay, New Zealand, there you go. So get a passport to New Zealand. Walk into the woods when it's your time. But not before. Alyssa wanted to know, because I know that your parents were like amazing and got you field guides. Alyssa Diodato wants to know if you have any favorite field guides or fern books? Has anyone just like absolutely knocked it out of the park with a fern book? This is a trick question.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  I have one.

• 1:02:02Alie Ward?

  Well, there you go.

• 1:02:09Alie Ward?

  Like mine.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Wow, that's self nauseous.

• 1:02:14Alie Ward?

  That's the best.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  It's right here if you want to see.

• 1:02:20Alie Ward?

  Yes, dude, there you go. Get, get your fern book. The book is called Ferns: Lessons in Survival from Earth's Most Adaptable Plants. And it has chapters on ferns on trees, ferns as trees, desert ferns, ferns in animals, humans in ferns, the past and the future of ferns. And it is just an elegant and gorgeously illustrated book. It belongs on your coffee table or under a holiday tree. We'll link it in the show notes. Top shelf fern book also.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  But in terms of field guide, there's a new one by Emily Sessa from New York Botanical Garden. And that's a beautiful fern guide you should, you should get.

• 1:03:00Alie Ward?

  Uh, does Zach Galifianakis know of your work?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 1:03:05Alie Ward?

  No?

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:05Alie Ward?

  I think someone needs to tell him.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  I, I know his work. I know his work. He doesn't know mine.

• 1:03:10Alie Ward?

  You need to get him a copy of your book.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Alie Ward?

  If he doesn't have it.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Alie Ward?

  I want him to sit between two copies of your Fern book.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  And an interview Lady Gaga.

• 1:03:21Alie Ward?

  Yes, an interview Lady Gaga, oh my god. You can be on set as a consultant.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  I mean, the federal funding is going away and we all need money to do research.

• 1:03:31Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  So whatever it takes, man, whatever it takes.

• 1:03:35Alie Ward?

  Whatever it takes, we'll send it up the chain. We're like, if anyone listening to this knows Zach Galifianakis and or Lady Gaga.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:03:42Alie Ward?

  Please, the Fern research in trouble. Well, that, you know, the last question I always ask her, what is the hardest part about your job? And right now, federal funding is in the toilet and things are in absolutely bonkers. We got climate change. What's the hardest part about what you do? Or what's gotten harder? Or what is there something that's just annoying?

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  I think funding has been more and more difficult. We spend a lot of time writing proposals and sometimes we got, it's really good feedback for NSF, USDA, DOE, those federal agencies. And they just don't have enough money to fund all the good research projects. And, you know, some Fern research can really change things, right? The insect side of things I mentioned earlier, right? That has actual practical translations into agriculture. Some people are studying symbiosis with center bacteria. How, if we can engineer a symbiosis of center bacteria with some corn plants, maybe, or rice plants,

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  that will also change how we do our agriculture. So a lot of this have real translations to the real world. And also Fern diversity is going away because all the things you mentioned, we do really need to understand their diversity before they disappear. And those kind of research is really hard to get funding. So Lady Gaga, if you're listening, help us out.

• 1:05:18Alie Ward?

  What about the best thing? What do you love? Like, what keeps you going?

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  So I guess the discovery and also working with people. I have a really awesome lab and it's really fun talking to them. I think what makes science great is the people. It's great to nerd out together.

• 1:05:35Alie Ward?

  And I love that fern people are rowdy and stick together.

• 1:05:41Alie Ward?

  So great. And there's gonna be people listening to this who are like, I'm a fern person and I never knew that there were other fern people out there that I could join up with.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Well, join American Fern Society.

• 1:05:54Alie Ward?

  Oh, my God, get your book. This is amazing.

• 1:05:58Alie Ward?

  Thank you so much for doing this. This is just one of my favorites. I think your book should be a holiday gift for anyone who likes plants.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:06:09Alie Ward?

  Get the book.

• 1:06:12Alie Ward?

  So ask fern-tastic people for reals, not smart questions, because they may have the same questions on their mind. And please grab a copy of Dr. Lee's book, Fern's: Lessons in Survival from Earth's Most Adaptable Plants, which we will link in the show notes for you alongside more of his research. We have a ton more links up at aliward.com/ologies/terodology. We're at Ologies on Instagram, a blue sky. I'm at Ali Ward on both. We have shorter, kid-friendly episodes of Ologies called Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S, available wherever you get podcasts. They're in their own separate feed you can subscribe to. And Ologies merch is at ologiesmerch.com. And you can join our Patreon for a dollar at patreon.com/ologies. Erin Talbert admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group.

• 1:06:56Alie Ward?

  Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kellyanne Dwyer does the website. Noelle Delworth keeps us evolving through time as scheduling producer. Managing Director Susan Hale is the fractal path that moves us forward. Jake Chaffee edits our massive genome of audio alongside Lead Editor and always nature-adjacent Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn unfurled the theme music. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I will tell you a secret from my sometimes ashamed brain. This week, it's that I was away for our Ologies live show and Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago and then I went straight to Lisbon. I left the country for six days for a friend's wedding and it was wonderful. And then I came back, it was Thanksgiving. My point is, my inbox is a mess.

• 1:07:40Alie Ward?

  It's so bad. It's just a tangled understory of branches and dead stuff and leaf litter and pythons and strangling vines. I have so many emails to return. It's just frightening. Honestly, Ward, you're playing with fire here. So if I owe you an email, I swear, today's the day. Also, I have never seen The Fern Gully, which everyone wants to know about. Everyone has questions about. It's a 1992 animated classic. Your friend Wikipedia just told me that it was Robin Williams' first animated film ever and that, quote, "Williams provided 14 hours of improvised lines for the part,

• 1:08:23Alie Ward?

  which had been originally conceived as an eight-minute role." 14 hours of improv. I can't even imagine the vibe in the room. 14 hours and I can't return an email. Okay, I'm off. Bye-bye.

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  Who killed Fern?

• 1:08:59Speaker 09

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