A fossil you can grow on your windowsill

in #gardening6 years ago

The maidenhair fern, as with quite a few other ferns, has been around since before the dinosaurs, but you can still grow it at home.

Being a forest floor species they can handle the shade found indoors. They are moisture loving and do very well when kept very wet.

Below is one growing on a windowsill at home.

Wild Maidenhair ferns carpeting the ground on the forest floor are an impressive site. These I photographed in ancient coastal indigenous forest in South Africa.

Ferns of other species carpeting the ground in other areas of the same Pirie forest.

Ferns are primitive plants and are living fossils. They predate flowering plants, and cone bearing plants. They propagate my means of spores like the fungi and mushrooms that are even more primitive.

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The evidence of their similar forbears are found in rocks hundreds of millions of years old. I am amazed to look it my fern on the windowsill and think that their forbears where brushed by the legs of T Rex and even older reptiles and amphibians.

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Very informative article @gavvet. I surely learnt a lot.
To add to what you have said, So many of us have the wrong impression of ferns, including me - I thought that giant Staghorns weren't really ferns but some sort of epiphyte more closely related to bromeliads or tillandsia.
Any plant that starts from spores is classified as a fern.That includes the unfern-like Staghorns, skinny Horsetail and many other seemingly alien plants.

We got these in Borneo. I'm not sure its the same species, the leafs do look similar though.

excellent post dear friend @gavvet, thank you very much for sharing this wonderful material. I found it incredible that they were so old, in my children I lived in a neighborhood where there was no drinking water, we accessed the water in a reservoir that we had in our land, inside the aljieve this brick footwear, it was amazing that the elechos grew In the aljive as its natural habitat, I also had the luck to know the wild ferns, at that time there were many fields where there were not many people hanging around the place and it was feasible that these elechas would grow there.
Thank you very much for sharing this information
I wish you a great year 2018

Very interesting, but I have to be honest, I knew that the fern is a very old plant, in the mountains where I live, in the pre Italian Alps, the forests are covered with ferns, this plant is really beautiful. Listen @gavvet, I found a very interesting fossil but I'm not sure if that's what I think, given your knowledge, I'd like to show you some pictures of it, maybe on discord, to get your opinion, I do not want to expose it to the public before knowing its real identity, so I prefer to have your opinion in private. I would be very grateful, thank you!

@gavvet,
Wow I have these plants in my garden! But actually i didn't know it comes from Jurassic age! :O This is amazing! I will give little more concern on those plants!@ Excellent post and thanks for sharing!

Cheers~

Interesting piece of history. Never thought much of ferns. I will look at ferns in a very different light. Thanks for the pictures and history.

Awesome post man!

Interesting this plant, thanks for sharing

Wow! Marvellous photography and great post.
I love nature too and the 1st picture is so beautiful. Ferns are primitive plants and living fossils pictures are superb. yes! they predate flowering plants, and cone bearing plants.

Thanks @gavvet for sharing this post.😊💚

Have a wonderful day!!

I just know fern plants are older than dinosaurs.
the evidence is clear on the fossil.
very good as home decoration plants, we feel like living in the world of dinosaurs. :D



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I have a Dragon's blood plant

Happy New Year @gavvet and family

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