Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Ferns

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why ferns are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode. Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5 Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsifpod

Ferns, known for being plants. Famous for being fern-shaped plants. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why ferns are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Hey there, Ciphalopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt.

I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie. Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of ferns? Well, I like to be betwixt them. The show is the last takeaway. We'll get to it. Yeah.

Have you ever had fiddled heads just as food? I haven't eaten them. It's good. But I know you can. Yeah, they're good. They're good. I like those. Okay, good.

My mom always had some ferns around the house. I believe she still has ferns. around the house. So I'm familiar with them. And, you know, they're, they're, they're nice plants. They're hard to kill. So I've actually killed quite a number of them. Because I like a challenge when it comes to killing houseplants. And they're, they're nice. I always found them pretty interesting how they would be curled up and then unfurl. The underside of them has little, little, what look like little seed bumpies. And I know they're, I know they're really old.

I know that they're much older than most plants and that they have a different method of reproduction than most plants. You know, when I was a kid, I did, I was super into dinosaurs. So I did enjoy kind of like getting down to the level of the fur. and having my dinosaur toys amongst the ferns. I was always, yeah, into that. I had no ferns growing up. I totally would have done that.

Yeah. I'd been like, yeah, I had all the toys. Yeah. I like them. What about you, Alex? I mainly associate them with the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. Because me and my wonderful wife, we would take a lot of trips there. And then they're everywhere.

Ferns are on all six continents, not Antarctica. but we would just see them a lot there because it turns out they like wet spaces and relatively shaded spaces. So they're often a forest floor plan and we just like see ferns a lot. Yeah. So it makes me think of air. It's nice. But they're everywhere. And I haven't, I've never like examined them closely.

It's cool you've seen the bumps on the bottoms of the fronds, which I want to do as soon as I can now that I learn something about them. Yeah. They're nice plants. They give your home sort of a, I don't know, like, fron, like, fron. Furny vibe, however that is. It's like a nice soft feeling of being in a greenhouse. Right. It's like weird and very foresty verdant and also ancient and also dinosaurs, but also very

approachable. Like it's not like, holy cow a fern. It's like, oh, okay. No, I know. It's an approachable plant. It doesn't, it's not intimidating. Like, I think monsters can be kind of intimidating because it's like, now that's a plant that I have to take care of.

Right. That feels like a whole thing. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. A ficus, you know, sometimes a ficus can be pretty extreme. But a fern is a gentle, a gentle plant that is welcoming and low-key. Yeah.

And shout out to people named fern. I don't come across that name a lot anymore. It's a beautiful name. I love it. That's a good name. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you to Brenda Yang for suggesting this topic.

Wait a second. Hold, hang on. And on every episode we leave it with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called, I do want clever conversation. That's why I listen to SIFPod. I just want numbers and stats and figures. I want SIF stats to start right now.

I've actually, that's one that I've been playing Baby G. The Billy Joel song? Or this? Like, through time. Well, now I'm going to do this one. I couldn't play it before because I hadn't had it yet. But now it's going to be played for him, the Alex version. Katie's hopping into a portal.

Katie, come back. Yeah. Oh, you're back suddenly. Yeah. I guess nothing happened. Cool. I saw dinosaurs. Right?

Wasn't my relationship to ferns? Time machine immediately. That's the thing is like always with a time machine mishap, it's like, uh-oh, I'm back in dinosaur times. It's never, uh-oh, I'm back in fern times, even though statistically speaking, that's way more likely. Yeah, it turns out. Yeah. Yeah. Way more of the timeline could be just fern times, yeah. Way more. Like if you, it's sort of like if you had a transporter accident, you're probably going to wind up in the ocean. If you had a time machine accident, you're probably going to wind up. up in fern times.

Yeah. Or like the planet just formed. So you're just by some lava. Like, oh, okay. Right, exactly. It's either going to be lava or ferns. Yeah. Our first number, kind of all about that, is about 10,500 species.

Wow. There are about 10,500 fern species in the world today. And according to Dr. Eric Schupew. who's a botanist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, that means that there are about as many fern species in the world as there are birds. All of the birds in the whole world, there's about 10,000, and same with ferns. Wow. So there's like a fern for every bird. Yeah, they could pair up. They could do sister cities, but ferns and birds, yeah.

Sure. Well, you could have, like, you know, how every state has, like, a state bird? You could also do a state fern. Oh yeah, especially when the country Balkanizes into sovereign citizens and a ton of tiny states, you know? Yeah, well, we'll get to that point probably but at least we have the provincial ferns to look forward to.

That's right. So all I know is just, like I was vaguely aware that there were different species of ferns, but when I look at a fern, I'm just like... Fern. Yeah, that's a fern. Like, I know that some of them have, I guess I've seen three kinds maybe.

I've seen the ones that just have your typical everyday standard, bog standard. I don't know if they live in bogs, but. It can. Yeah, yeah. You know, standard fern with the sort of spear-like leaves and the single frond. And then I've also seen ones that are like they have little heart-shaped leaves. And then I think I've seen ones that have more. I guess like serrated leaves.

Yeah. And then that's it. That's all. Those three have been, and I don't know what they're called. They're all green though. There's no, no weird colors ones that I've seen.

I've only seen green ferns. But that's my, that's it. That's my fern experience. Yeah. And in the bonus show, we'll talk a little about what's called the silver fern.

Ooh. Because that's a New Zealand plant with a little of a silvery color. Fun. But I'm, I'm with you. And because there's more than 10,000 species, we won't cover

really any of them. We're talking about ferns pretty generally this week. I'm with fern. And yeah, Dr. Eric Schupeelts, he's a botanist who specializes in ferns that makes him a teridologist. No way. Is that like specific to ferns? Yeah, it's a scientist who studies ferns. Are you kidding? Like, that's Taryn. Say it again. Sorry. And the spelling is interesting. It's P-T-E-R-edologist. And so it's the same root words as those winged dinosaurs like terosaurs and tyrannadons where it's PT at the front. Huh.

Because it's Greek words meaning a wing or a feather. Yeah. Did you know that helicopter, the parts of the word aren't a hella and copter? It's helico ter. I never thought about that. The end is like wings, right? So it's petr at the end and then it's helico. at the beginning.

Oh, right. And the front is like a circle or a sun or something. Yeah, helico ter. Whoa. Oh, man. I'm going to stare at the sky and think about that for a while. Wow. Think about it.

Really, it says something about our society. Yeah, and the pros will often call ferns territophytes. Territophytes. I mean, they'll probably just call them ferns too because, you know, we're all regular people. But teridophytes is more of a name in the terrodology field, you know. Right. So a terrodologist. Yeah.

That's a French scientist. Wow. And there's so many species for a teradologist to study because they are a very, very ancient kind of organism, like Katie was saying. We think that they originated at least 375 million years ago. And 375 million years ago is a period called the Devonian that's nicknamed the Age of Fishes, because fishes were some of the most complex animal life and they were only starting to move on to land and adapt to the land.

Sounds like we might have called it, though, the age of the, what did you call them? Terridids? Yeah, Tirida fights. Territophytes. Yeah, it's great. Fight is a plant word. It's like a winged plant.

Yeah, it's great. P-H-Y-T-E, not a fight club. Fight, fight, fight, fight. And, yeah, and we're completely sure of fern's origin because we have a fossil of a 375 million-year-old fern. Wow. Apparently it's at the Queensland Museum in Australia. And they say that's not even necessarily when they started.

That's just the oldest one we've found so far. So that was like it was an imprint in some rock? Yeah, apparently a volcano erupted and trapped it in a very like preserved way. Oh dear. Yeah. Like it's image basically. Did it die? Did it die?

Was he all right? Was he okay? No, he... And the other really weird thing is that over this giant amount of time, there's also been relatively rapid fern evolution. So ferns are both extremely ancient and almost none of the species are the same as they were in dinosaur times. Interesting.

So there's no extant species. from dinosaur times. It's an in-between thing. We think there's a couple extant species. Okay. And the like sort of nicknamey name for the group of species is called royal ferns, partly just because of their ancientness, you know. But there's one called Osman Dostrom Cinemomium, aka the cinnamon fern.

That sounds good. That evolved 75 million years ago, which is before the dinosaurs died. Why is it called the cinnamon fern? It's mostly the color and look. The spores that it's launching, it makes it look like it's dusted in cinnamon. Delicious. Like some kind of treat. Yeah, and then there's also like debate about one species called Osmunda Claytoniana,

which is also known as the Interrupted Fern. There's a study arguing that's from 180 million years ago. Sorry, I was trying to interrupt you. Yeah. Why is it called an interrupted fern? I'm curious. It's the pattern of the leaves on the front. Yeah.

That's just how they were laid out. And Claytoniana, the scientific name refers to like a guy who helped identify it. But there's some people who claim that's from all the way back in the Jurassic and was around a lot of dynos. But either way, almost all of our ferns now are some kind of hybrid or evolution of what dynos used to eat. But then a couple are from then. And the overall kind of plant is super ancient. It's kind of both from dinosaur times and not. But I like the interrupting cow version of the name.

The what? Furn! Knock knock. Who's there? Interrupting Furn. Interrupting Furn! Furn! Wait, we got it.

I can't do this alone. I feel like instead of making a noise, it would just hit you in the face. Right. And it's fine because it's a fern. It's like, oh, yeah. Or just yell fern. Fern. Fern!

Furn! Furn! Furn! Yeah, and then the weirdest Furn evolution number might be. 60 million years apart. So 60 million years apart. It's a good amount of time. Yeah, that's the gap between two evolutions of two fern species that we recently discovered were able to become a hybrid and reproduce with each other, which is apparently very weird in evolutionary biology that species that evolved 60 million years apart can in any way mate and make a hybrid, even if they're both ferns.

you know. That's wild. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently the resulting plant is sterile, but it reproduces through rhizomes instead of sexually. Rizomes. And it's a relatively common fern in the French Pyrenees Mountains. You can find it at garden centers and plant shops and stuff in that part of France. But researchers at the University of British Columbia did a DNA analysis of it. It's called cystocarpium Rosca Mianum. And it turns. out that that fern is a mating between a kind of fern that grows on relatively dry, rocky outcroppings and a different kind of fern that grows on wet forest floors. So they found a way to reproduce at all. And they evolved 60 million years apart from each other. And apparently that's a record for any known two life forms reproducing. So that would be like a dinosaur mating with like a fish, a modern day fish, and then having an offspring or what?

Excellent question. So this basically was science that was ignored until the lead researcher gave a quote comparing it to a human mating with something else. Lead researcher Carl Rothfels said that on that time scale, a 60 million year divergence is approximately equivalent to a human mating with a lemur. So then headlines were like, hey, look, look. at that. Yeah, I mean, that's a little bit of a, what an odd thing to say, Bart, Bart Simpson.JPEG.

Because it's like accurate and also just such a weird way to think about it. Yeah, it's not, it's not the most comfortable way to think about it. But yeah, I mean, I like to think of it as like a dinosaur mating with like, bearded lizard that you have and then making like a pet dinosaur that you can hug. Not a guy you know making a weird Lieber child. Yeah. Like, hey, get out of here. Stop it. Hello, father. Why you take me to preschool?

Yeah. Just grasping stuff with their tail. Yeah. But yeah. So that's, that's, you. It's truly wild about their evolution. And it also fits the extreme strangeness of fern reproduction, which is takeaway number one. Fern reproduction gets so strange, its confusing process contributed to human myths about fairies. Ah. Like, people were so unsure how any of this works until relatively recent history that they said it. It must be, let's invent fairies to, like, explain these spreading. Let's, yeah, it's got to be fairies.

like rubbing the ferns together because otherwise in what possible way. Well, I do know that they've got spores, which is different from how a lot of plants do it. Fungi use spores. Mushrooms use spores, but most plants these days don't necessarily use spores. Yeah, and it's because of their ancientness. That just, you know, seeds hadn't been so dominant yet. plants weren't really a thing yet. And so, yeah, they're doing it an old way. You named Drought rhizomes. So I want to explore rhizomes a little more with you, Alex.

Would you take me through rhizomes? Yeah, that is a branching underground network of root-like structures and a whole separate way besides spores that ferns can propagate themselves. There's no sex involved. And also, everything above ground can die, but the rhizome network can stay alive and keep. keep producing new ferns. This is, again, very fungus-like, except that ferns are definitely not a fungus. They're definitively not fungi. But the rhizomes and the spores are both very fungus-like.

Yeah. Yeah, and then there's a third other way, too, which is bulblets. Bulblets are where the fern's body up above the ground will, like, essentially, apparently it usually gets too heavy and then touches the ground and something called a bulblet falls off of it plants itself and as a new fern. I used to dig those up all the time as a kid in the backyard near the ferns. And I thought they were like tiny fern potatoes. They don't taste like tiny fern potatoes.

Me and the whole audience were like, and what did it taste like? Not great. I'm sure a lot of the stuff I tried to eat as a kid might not have been so good for me. But I'm going to see, what are they called? They're not called postules. I just thought of that, but fern. Bulblets. Bulblets.

Like it bulb makes me think of tulips or something. Yeah. So it's like a miniature bulb, bulb lit. That sounds like a Pokemon though, Fern bulb lit. Big time, yeah. It evolves into Ivy Lit and then Venus lit and then, yeah. And with the Fidelhead type specifically, you need to not let them unfurl before you cook them. They become like unpleasant to the human body if they've unfurled all the way.

And then apparently a lot of ferns are also at least modestly toxic to humans. And one called the bracken fern is suspected of containing carcinogens and being like cancerous to humans. They are often defending themselves from us or other herbivores eating them. Right. I did look up bulblets. They're not like good. Like you shouldn't eat them just because they're not good tasting, but apparently they're not toxic.

Like if you sort of chew on one, it's not going to hurt you unless it's from, yeah, the highly toxic variety. Yeah, yeah. From what I read, it seems like it'll just make you upset and you'll be okay. Yeah. But also maybe you can get cancer from one specific kind of fern called the bracken But we're not sure. It's weird. So, like, if you eat it or if you hang out around it, like, how does that work?

Apparently, they think it's if you eat it or if it is in enough of your water supply, like, it's roots and parts. Whoa, that's, how does that even happen? Because, like, how is it so carcinogenic that it leaches into the water supply and messes with you that way? they're still trying to figure out the theory is that it has one carcinogen in it there's just so much of it it like leaches into the water yeah that's pretty alarming so like how did they discover that they just found people who lived near this bracken fern would get cancer at higher numbers i don't know how they discovered it it's it's an invasive plant so it just gets a lot of places and i think people wanted to know more about it yeah right someone got sick and she's like well tell me a little bit about your diet. It's like, well, start the morning with a heaping bowl of bracken fern.

The study I pulled back up, it's the contaminated water thing and then also if livestock graze on it, then the dairy or meat from the livestock is apparently concerning. Oh, no kidding. That's, that's kind of scary. Yeah, it's a 2025 study. They say that it is a carcinogen called taquilicide that forms a guanine 06 addict in DNA. And I don't really understand any of what I said, but that's what they're worried about. Yeah, you just made those words up. I'm on to you. Key sources for this takeaway, there's a book called The Plant Lovers Guide to Ferns,

which is by botanist Richie Seffen and Sue Olson, and collaboration with the UK Rail Botanical Gardens at Q, and then also digital resources from forests, Canada, and from the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. ferns reproduce in a way that most other plants don't because a seed is basically just a baby plants all the parts are inside the seed it's multicellular a spore is just one reproductive cell that can develop all the way into a new plant and its tininess lets it mostly be carried by the wind there are some wind-blown seeds but because it's so tiny apparently a fern fronds

that's only 25 inches long can produce over 7 million spores. It's just launching as many as possible. That's a lot of spores. I mean, I thought that at one point, like, the planet was just kind of covered in ferns. They were, like, everywhere. One of the most sort of the biggest ground cover, most numerous thing was just ferns everywhere. Yeah. And then also that weird kind of proto tree that sort of looks like a fern on the coal episode.

We talk about that being most of what was on the planet. Then all of it died. And then it made a layer of a bunch of fossil fuels for us that will never happen again. And then we burn that to kill more plants. Yeah. The cycle gets worse. Yeah. And then most ferns make their spores from what's called sporangia.

The singular is sporangium. but they're on the underside of the leaves. You made that up. And yeah, because they're so lightweight that also helps explain that weird French Pyrenees fern where two fern species from totally different habitats crossbred, it's partly because things are wind blown and lightweight and would have come together. Now, how does sexual reproduction work here? Because, like, you're saying, like, a spore can just kind of contain, like, it can make a whole new fern.

Like the spore just flies off and makes a new fern. Like how does the, because that sounds like asexual reproduction. Yeah. So they, there's basically two entire kinds of plants in each fern species. Because you have what we think of as a whole fern. Then it blows a bunch of spores out there. And then when that lands, that becomes something called a gametophyte, which is a tiny plant that's going to do sexual reproduction with itself.

And also it can receive or trade sperm and eggs with other gametophytes, which is how you would get like more hybrids or more actual sexual exchange. Okay. So you have this like mini plant that does romance with itself or other ferns. And then that thing creates the spore that actually goes out and makes the fern that we know and love. Yeah, that gametophyte, one way or another, a sperm and egg combine. Apparently the sperm swim in water too. Like these plants depend on rain, do other sources of water to move. And then the female structure releases chemicals to attract and guide sperm to the egg.

But then, yeah, once that sexual reproduction can happen, then that results in what we think of as a fern. And what we think of as a fern is really a sporo fight. The sporophyte is the big fern that makes the spores, and the gametophyte is a tiny, a couple millimeters across, usually plants that does sexual reproduction. And they're not, it's not just like a miniature version of the, of the fur. Like I'm looking at these and they look like. They're different, yeah. Yeah, they look like a completely different species.

They're like, like you said, they're like tiny. It's kind of like not a bunch of leaves. It's sort of like each unit is sort of like one little, uh, some of them kind of. kind of look almost like clovers. Yeah. They remind me of the emoji of a sprout, like a plant sprout, you know? It's just a really tiny little sprout plant that you would never think of as a fern. But it's the same species, but a thing doing a different thing.

It's very strange. Right, right. I mean, it's like this is actually pretty, this happens with a lot of the animals as well. Actually, animals that do not seem like animals like a lot of sea life does this kind of thing where it's like sea sponges or tunicates will have like a coral as well, we'll sort of have these like different stages where they have like reproductive forms and then asexual forms and free floating forms and then the they're the versions that are like plugged into some substrate. Yeah. And that is the most ancient thing about ferns.

Like they're doing reproduction and life in a way that most other life on Earth has kind of either moved past or been doing since that ancient time. It's very weird. Yeah. Yeah, it's very odd. And then there's a few other plants that share some fern characteristics but not all. And human botanists have called these fern allies. Which sounds very some kind of world war of plants to me. Well, it's odd because it makes it sound like they're trying to assist the ferns.

Right, and like taking over the earth. Right, right. With names like club mosses, horse tails, quill warts. It's usually because either they have alternating sporophyte and gametophyte generations. Right. Sporophyte and gametophyte generations. Or they have similar leaf structures or some other combo of things that is more like a fern than other plants. It's weird.

I mean, I attended some of those Fern Moss Alliance meetings in high school as an ally, as an ally. I would never make spores, but I'm with you, you know, I'm with you. Right. No, I'm, I'm an ally. I'm pro spore. And yeah, and this way of reproducing no seeds, no flowers, it confused many generations of humans all over the world. Yeah. And apparently a lot of fairy lore was either inspired by it or worked it in, especially because, you know, ferns can grow in basically all kinds of habitats unless there's a lot of bright sunlight or it's super dry. So they're often a forest floor plant and people started saying, okay, fairies are probably hanging out with the ferns and the fungi and the other stuff we don't understand because spores are too small to see. And I played into a concept of fairy circles, which is, you know, a forest floor location where there's a bunch of ferns, fungi, other little weird stuff, you know.

Yeah. They will grow sometimes in a circle or at least I know that fungi do sometimes partially. Like I thought in a large part due to the rhizomes, the underground network that will grow in a pattern. And then it'll just like, because we're used to maybe ground. cover where it's just a bunch of moss or a bunch of grass that's like growing or trees that are sort of more randomly positioned. But to have like a little cluster, like it looks like a little community. And it is kind of a little community communal organism. Totally. And people just hadn't done the hard science of exactly describing how that works. So they said it's fairies, which is one.

I'm really into like I'm reading some stuff like on sort of Irish folklore about fairies and stuff because I just I love how so much of it seems like it's basically a way to explain things and be educational like don't accept food from strangers like don't put weird stuff you find in the forest like in your mouth which I probably needed that lesson as a child you know it's sort of like just a bunch of things that feel like it was done to like teach children or maybe even a foolish adults like to act in a way that was smart but it used fairies as like the explanation for all these things so all uh yeah another way ferns seemed magical is that apparently about a third of all species are what's called epiphytes epiphytes epiphytes are able to use other plants as a physical

support to grow on top of. They're not parasites. They're not taking water or nutrients from it. But so people also thought, oh, ferns are on the ground and on top of this tree. It must truly be magical stuff. Amazing. Right. So that would be a commensalistic relationship because that's like they're not parasitic,

but it's still a form of symbiosis because the fern is benefiting from the other plant, but the plant's not being helped or harmed by the farm. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the epiphyte type of ferns just grow on top of it, and the tree is unharmed and does nothing. Cool. Yeah. And then the other, other folk belief people developed is surely ferns have seeds and flowers. You just have to be here at a magic timer place to see it.

And so one claimed that on midsummer's night, you could see their seeds. That's the summer solstice night. It's the shortest night of the year because it's the longest day. And then my favorite, I guess, useful myth is that apparently in some Slavic folklore and also some Baltic area folklore, both in Eastern Europe there, they said that there's not fairies going on. What's happening is that ferns under the full moon at midnight burst into like a beautiful glowing flower, like light shining from it. So if you're there at the full moon at midnight, you'll see the ferns flower. Okay, but it's not that hard to be there at the full moon at midnight. So why didn't anyone just be like, okay, I'll go, I'll be there.

I'll go and look for it at midnight. And then disprove that. Why didn't that happen? Excellent question. Apparently, in some of these communities, it was an elaborate myth to allow young human couples to sneak off into the woods and have sex. Oh, okay. Like, oh, it's, we'll go look for the fern flower.

We'll just be doing that. But then they would hook up in the woods. Apparently, they'd either claim they're going on an overnight journey to see it, or it became an idiom in their language, how they talked. Like, yeah, I saw the fern flower last night. Would you like to come up and see my etchings of the fern blooming? Yeah. I see.

Interesting, interesting. So that's good stuff. Oh, kids these days and in ancient times and throughout. history. And then the last thing about fern reproduction and sex, bratting everything else, is takeaway number two. One genus of fern species is one of our clearest examples of what's nicknamed backward evolution.

A few different species have done something where they selected for a behavior and then selected away from it again. And the most simple and clear. example might be a kind of plants called chain ferns that changed how their leaves work. Hmm. But then they changed it back. And then like nothing else changed. That was it.

They gave it a shot. They were like starting to advance towards something more complicated. And they looked at like humans and all RBS and like, ah, no, we're going back. We're going back. Ritifern to the old ferns. Ritivern to ferns. Rita Fern? Rita Fern.

I like the idea that they were like, this is going to lead to be paying taxes. Somehow we're going to have a tax system. Yeah. They just chose the trad fern lifestyle. So what are these trad ferns? The study about them is from 2024, published in the journal Nature Communications.

Researchers at the University of Tennessee and at Cornell University worked together on chain ferns and basically nailing down how their leaves evolved over time. They started out in the way most fern species started out. They were what is technically called monomorphic leaves, which is where the leave did two jobs all at once. They produced spores and they did photosynthesis. And then a lot of ferns evolved to specialize where the leaves either do spores or do photosynthesis and just focus on one.

I see. And then apparently these chain ferns, they were monomorphic. They evolved to be what's called dimorphic, where some leaves just do spores, other leaves just do photosynthesis. And then conditions changed, and thanks to evolving to deal with that, they went backward and they became monomorphic again.

That's wild. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, and they spread in rhizome networks too. So the spores are not necessarily the only way to put new ferns, new places. I'm trying to think of examples of backwards evolution in animals. I mean, I don't know if this is technically an example, but I had mentioned earlier the tunicots that are these sea creatures that they actually have this like free swimming stage where it seems more advanced, right?

Because they kind of like swim around like a tadpole almost. And then they're like, actually, I'm going to like settle on the substrate and then become a more simple organism that's just like a tube. Cool. So sometimes, you know, you got to be trad and get rid of all your organs and your extra leaves. Yeah. And apparently one of the big examples is considered very different from this frame thing because it's just that some fish but also some mammals like whales and dolphins started out as aquatic, adapted to live on land, and then adapted to live in the water again.

Yeah. But in that process, they evolved so many other ways that these scientists feel like it's not a good way to just look at the backwards steps of evolution kind of thing. I don't know if it's, if I'm disagreeing with anyone here, but it's like, I almost don't view that as backwards evolution because, yeah, like whales and stuff are, they didn't just like un-evolve and then turn into fish. They're definitely not fish and they're capable of a lot of things that fish cannot do. The reason that whales can get so big is because they have lungs that can breathe air and process oxygen really well, whereas fish just can't get that big

because gills are not as efficient as lungs, which sounds counterintuitive because you need air and they're like underwater. So it's like, wait, how can they do that? But they can like take Again, like them just like taking in a huge gulp of air and then holding it is actually quite, quite efficient. And they can, they can become much larger because of that. Exactly. Yeah, like that just seems like forwards evolution in all cases. And forwards and backwards are all made up things to call it. But yeah, these scientists want to use this fern study to do further looks at how often does a creature just select for one trait and then on select.

it without lots of other changes or even improvements because unlike whales, these ferns really did just mostly change one thing and then undo it. That's it. Yeah, that's like really straightforward. So yeah, it could lead to some other cool evolutionary biology and science and stuff. I like that. I'm a fan of that. Yeah. And then our next takeaway is beyond biology. Takeaway number three, there's a fern species that uses its body to mine. and refine toxic minerals. Whoa. An Asian fern species is called Blechnem Oriental, is the scientific name.

But scientists recently discovered that this sucks rare earth minerals out of the ground into its body and also turns them into metallic crystals that are not as toxic as the original minerals. That's very cool. Yeah. So they, like, are they, okay, I do got to ask it first, like, are they shiny? Like, you would think they just look like a plant. And apparently this species mines minerals so effectively up to 5% of its body mass can be what's called monazite crystals. That's the non-toxic crystals they turn stuff into.

That's really interesting. I mean, I guess like. It's so weird. this is something that plants do like the reason you can get iron from like spinach is it's pulling iron out of the ground and then you can eat that iron in the spinach and that's how Popeye gets his strong arms last step is the most important yeah yeah yeah this and apparently there's relatively recent interest in this with something we talked about on the recent bismuth episode of sif It's a made-up category of rare earth minerals. It just means minerals with specific applications in tech and electronics, especially for making batteries or making conductors.

One relatively ordinary metal in that category is nickel. And 10 years ago, people in Malaysia planted a huge field of a specific shrub species that is excellent at sucking nickel out of the ground. And according to grist.org, their feature about this, The people who are like farming that plants can shave about a foot of growth off the top of it, burn that and get what they call bio ore. It's up to a quarter nickel by weight. That's so weird.

So like you're not. You're mining. You're just mining, but with making plants do all the work. Yeah, and the name is phytomining. Phyto mining. Plant mining, yeah. And it's, you know, much greener than mining because you're not digging with giant polluting machines. I mean, plants are also green.

So it's... And they're fully plants, yeah. I guess that was going to be my next question is like, is that better for the environment than other mining? Like, is it more efficient? Yeah, apparently it's much more efficient. And people's main hesitation as we're just used to using a giant machine to get a giant hunk of war. And they think, oh, how much could we get out of a shrub or a fern? to build stuff. I'm a serious builder, you know? But if we're burning, is that like a problem?

Because like if we're burning stuff, but it's still, I would assume that's still more efficient than like burning fossil fuels for the big nickel crane. I don't really know what, I don't know how it works. I'm sorry. It's a giant like mechanical mole that burrows in the ground. Now I'm picturing Dr. Robotnik, but he's just digging up gems. That's like exactly what I had in mind, actually. Like that's it. That was what I was thinking. But I don't really know much about mining. Yeah, mining, especially the way they displace things and leave behind waste and so on.

It is very bad for the environment. And we want these minerals to especially make like green technology. You know, like if you can make batteries for solar panels, maybe it's worth the upfront pollution of the mining. It can also be really like dangerous for workers too and often they're not given like in order to like have these margins just be ridiculously in favor of making big profits. It's like they're they're not given safety equipment or protective equipment. So then they're just like exposed to these dangerous chemicals that we use for all of our phones and our batteries and stuff. So it doesn't seem.

ideal. Totally. And yeah, apparently scientists began studying phytomining in the 1980s because they hoped maybe for all these reasons, worker safety, the planet's health, just a good way to get minerals. Maybe this is the way to go. And this fern story is less than a year old. Key Source is popular mechanics. It's featured by Darren Orff. At the end of 2025, a Chinese research study found that not only does this specific fern species, not only does it pull rare earth minerals out of the ground, in particular some of the most toxic ones to deal with, but also it crystallizes them inside and between the cells of the plant,

to the point that it stores a ton of it inside its body. And so that process is called phytominerization. We borderline coined the term to describe what this fern does. And now these researchers are curious, hey, can we breed plants to also do this extra step? But, you know, how efficient can it be? Can this fern show us a way to get toxic minerals out of the ground in a green way? Yeah. I mean, that sounds pretty cool because, like, when we talk about Jurassic Park, it's always, like, dinosaurs.

I mean, that's not true. I guess in the first Jurassic Park you had botanist, really interested in the dinosaur times plants. But what about Fern Park, where it's just ferns? And cool plants from, because, like, again, seems much more feasible to bring back Devonian ferns. Yeah. And then all the way needs is crowds or tourists who want to see ferns.

And that's where our podcast comes in. I'm getting people excited. Yeah, that's it. I'm there. I'm excited. Getting hyped. I'm super hyped. I love botanical gardens. They're so good.

Yeah. I'm not being like sarcastic. I really do enjoy a botanical garden. It makes me feel very happy. I love all the weird plants. Yeah. And a lot of like science stuff of like breeding new stuff is always like kind of like, oh, let's bring back.

a mammoth or something, but if we could create some really good ferns, that seems potentially huge. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe easier to do because it's just a plant. It's not a whole mammoth, you know? Like, oh, it's just some little weird spore machine of a plant. Sure, easy. Knock it out. It could both be more feasible but also more dangerous because you could have like, And it seems like you'd have a big opportunity for it to become super invasive, right? Like a fern. Right. That's true.

Sucking all the minerals out of the planet. But, you know, I mean, I guess my feeling is it's not like we're doing a great job right now. So I wouldn't, I'm not like against it as long as it's like done with some responsibility. I'm remembering that one Jurassic Park shot where a T-Rex is accidentally loose in California or whatever. whatever, you know, it's very iconic. But then with this, it's the interrupting fern is at your door. It's just ferns. And just bam.

And it's growing slowly but surely. Ah, man. Honey, I'm going to trim the ferns again this weekend. I do it every day. Camera slowly pans out to ominous music of you, like, getting out the shears. Getting yard waste bag stickers. Yeah. Oh, geez.

Yeah. Yeah. And folks, that's a ton of takeaways and numbers. We're going to take a quick break. Then briefly visit the British Empire and Hollywood. Oy, Gov. Perfect Hollywood accent. Hey, we're back with more Fern takeaways.

The next one's takeaway number four. The U.S. and UK had a fern craze throughout the Victorian era. Of course they did. I mean, man. Look, you got to, those Victorians were nuts for ferns. Everyone knows that. It turns out like, and it was almost entirely a cultural and fashion fad. Like they were not getting these to eat or make medicine or anything.

It was just like trying to find the most exciting ferns in Victorian Britain especially. I mean, I can empathize with that. That's me at Home Depot like every weekend. What I think of it as just a houseplant crazed, I'm like, yeah, we're in one now, man. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Oh, no, it's so true. It rules.

I actually, so I have a terrible confession, a couple of my houseplants died. That's part of it. That's just part of it, man. Yeah. I did have a, I did have, I've become much better at keeping houseplants, but I did have a baby child. And I've been, you know, who is a lot more important to me than any, any plants. So I did I did lose a couple, but I like to think that they've lent their strength to my boy child. You know, their spiritual energy of being sort of a house plant rather than just me straight up neglecting them to death.

No, we had a begonia go that way. It's boosted Schmidt baby. Exactly. It's like this is proof of my love because. Yeah. But it's, but yeah, like there is like a huge house plant. craze now where you can get like these like designer icuses and designer what nots like it's it's i mean i'm into it i'm not mocking it because i'm like i'm the target audience for it but it is pretty like i

get it i guess i understand the victorians and the ferns uh it's like when you're when you're repressed either by a pandemic or by uh queen victoria you need cool plants to get you through it. Kind of, yeah. This really came and went, but only after about 100 years, because the key sources are a feature for J-Store Daily by Cynthia Green and a feature for Alice

Obscira by Demitra Nicolido. They say that in the 1820s AD, one British guy sparked it. The trend was called Teridomania, Fernmania. And this guy, really wild name, his name is Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. No, it's not.

Yeah, Bagshaw is a powerful middle name. It's strong, makes you 100 feet tall. I simply don't believe you. And he invented what's basically a tiny glass hot house for keeping a fern alive in a cold room or climate. What was that called? And he named it a Wardian case. A Wardian case. I actually...

Ward like me, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward. That's a nice name. I like that. Oh, yeah. I have seen these. I wanted, I want one of these, actually. And it kind of set off the whole thing because then people were like, I'm going to buy the case and then put interesting ferns in it and look at them and show them to people. I'm not even joking, Alex. I had no idea that's what this is called. And I saw one and I was like tiny glass greenhouse. Yeah. It looks like a terrarium for a lizard or something, but it's for plants.

Right. What I want to do is get one and then put, make it like put a bunch of like small plants that are little and then put like a tiny hose and a tiny watering can in it. So it looks like it's a greenhouse for little people like little tiny fairies. Yeah. But I'm not going to lie to you. I'm looking on Amazon right now. One of these warding cases that looks, you know, like like I'm not. I don't know, it doesn't look that big, is 1,264 euros. I'm mad about this because I want one, but I also not, I don't have a thousand euros lying around for this thing. I'm angry. Right, it's like just too much money.

Yeah. It's too much. Dang it. I think I can get a cheaper version, though. To be clear, this is not happening. like anytime soon. Like I've said, I've already killed two houseplants, but this is my dream. And I didn't know it was called a Wardian case.

So now I actually have really good, uh, uh, intel to get it. Right, exactly. It also, the one you sent me looks like baby Golden could knock it over with the slightest breath. You know what I mean? Like it looks really top heavy. He's already, uh, already grabbed his, uh, I,

ice cream truck clock and tossed it to the ground. And the ice cream truck clock did survive with minimal damage. But this thing would not. Like I think I would blink wrong and my warding case would shatter to the floor. Yeah. Sure. And that's that's a thousand euros down. Right. Shattered upon the floor. That was my whole briefcase of money for fleeing the country. My thousand euros. Dang it. Right. But I love I love the constant. All right. So it's like, all right, you have this tiny glass greenhouse, essentially, and then you put a bunch of cool ferns in it. Yeah, you put cool ferns in it. Apparently, also rich people promoted the idea that poorer people could ennoble themselves and make themselves healthier if they fern hunted. So across all social classes, not everybody had a nice case, but everybody would just go find ferns in the woods.

Fern designs were a big motif on fabrics, T-sets, stationary, apparently even baptism presence and tombstone designs. There's a lot of ferns in kind of all of the 1800s in Britain. And this got big in the U.S. as well, just because we're so influenced by the U.K. at the time. And then the peak of this, apparently there were professional adventurers who promised to bring you back an exotic fern from South America or from Asia to your mansion and Britain or the United States.

And they got a lot of work. Like they were constantly going out and getting ferns for people. Right. And secret they were just going down to Home Depot. Right. You only need to go get one. And then you plant it in your yard and just give it to people. Did this cause a lot of like invasive fern issues?

Apparently not because like especially the rich people. would just kind of almost keep it to themselves, you know what I mean? Like your wardian case or your mansion garden, you don't want other people to have your cool fern. Right. And then poor people couldn't necessarily save or store these. They would just do a pressing of it or something and then that's that. Yeah.

Yeah. This fad only died down because the world got a lot worse. Apparently it stayed popular all the way until World War I started. And then especially British people were just too busy having that terrible experience. Yeah, like getting hit with mustard gas. That'll, you know, that'll do it. But it was almost a century of teridomania, fern craze. It's cool.

I like that. There's a lot of messed up. It's not hurting anybody. Yeah, there's like a lot of messed up stuff that seems less messed up than most things. Just being super into ferns. Yeah, Fern fandom. Yeah. I feel like there's an alternative history when we didn't have World War I

because we didn't have the band Franz Ferdinand never came into being and never released that song. You know, the one. Take me home? Yeah, that's it. Take me out. It's called Take Me Out? Take Me Out to the ball game. I imagine the Archduke saying, take me out.

And then they're like, I agree, assassination. Uh-oh. Oopsies. Whoopsies. Whoopsies. But like an alternative history when we didn't have World War I and we never had World War II and we just had ferns. You know, it also, the wars might have been inevitable due to the enmesh networks of fern allies, right? They're right.

The ferns were discussing. What if the, was the assassin like a fern sort of disguised like inside a trench coat shuffling around? Yeah, like a Serbian fern and a dredchgoat or whatever, yeah. Well, a whole different cultural attack. We have a very fast, quick final takeaway number five. The Between Two Ferns series of sketch comedy interviews used real ferns except for one stunt. If folks have heard of it, the Zach Galvanakis and Scott Ackerman behind the scenes sketch show, where Zach Galfinakis does bad interviews between two ferns.

They needed stunt ferns at one point. They needed stunt ferns. Yeah, and it's because of a scene in the movie they made. They made a movie for Netflix. Yeah, it's pretty good. Okay. And it's partly a joke, too, that's something that is so low budget and run down looking as a movie, you know. But yeah, the source here is an article in popular science where they, in particular, interview production designer Susie Mancini.

who is a professional Hollywood production designer and then was tasked with a show that's basically just two ferns for the movie. And Zach Galaphanakis. Right. So a lot of wrangling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. You need the Zach Galvanakis handler. Yeah. And the best boy, the Zach Galfanacus best boy, second best boy, boom operator.

A key grip, but they just rassel him. That's the grip sense. Yeah. He's the kind of actor that must be rasseled. I'm also, if I remember, I'm going to link, Jesse Thorn caught this. Zach Alfenakis went to one of the World Cup games, and he attended wearing a maximum fun hat. It's like on TV globally. It's cool.

Wow. That's so cool. Zach, if you're listening to this, I hope that, I hope you're rasseled with the respect you have earned as an actor and an attour. Yeah, now I'm like eternally his fan. Yeah. And so, yeah, between two ferns, the web show, I struggled to find exactly for sure whether they had real ferns or not, but they probably did. Because apparently throughout the web series in the movie, they used a typical and very hardy species of fern. It's called the Boston fern.

Boston fern. And ironically, it's a tropical plant that is not native to Boston, but it does well indoors. most fern species do well with some or a lot of shade. And so if you water it and it's indoors, it's fine. Yeah, got to give it water. It became popular with rich Bostonians during that fern craze. So that's why it's called the Boston Fern. Right.

Pack you thin. And it grows large if you take care of it. So it is funny visually on screen, you know. Large. I lived in Boston for a short amount of time, so I'm allowed to mingle the Boston accent. Yeah, you had a, was it a Cambridge fern, I guess? Yeah, yeah. Parky spars, spars, parky spores and Harvard Yard.

I don't know. Parking spores in Harvard Yard. So apparently when they were making a movie of it, you know, just like Hollywood planning and production, they want to be prepared for situations. So the team kept 10 ferns at the ready. Wow. So that Scott Augerman said in an interview that they had what he called the camera ferns. Like the two best-looking ones tended to be in the shot. But then there would be eight more ferns ready to go if something happens.

Right. Like back up ferns, understudy ferns. Yeah. Did the understudy ferns learn all the lines that the other ferns, you know? Right. And the lines are just people being upset with Zach Alphanakis. So you just hear the mutter anger when they're running their lines. There's an interrupting fern that just keeps yelling, fern! And then the director goes,

okay, that's it. Cut. Cut, cut, cut, cut. This extra is killing me, this interrupting fern. Yeah. Fern! And then the last thing here, they asked Susie Mancini if the ferns are always real. And she said, quote, real plants look much better on camera. Fake plants move in a different way. they catch light differently, it would take away from the reality and also the joke, end quote. She's so right about that. Yeah, and they're ferns.

You can just get them. They're ferns. You can. And then they had to make one exception because in the movie, the inciting incident is Zach Alphanakis interviewing Matthew McConaughey and Matthew McConaughey picking on him and saying he has nothing in his life. And like, you know, Matthew McConaughey has a wife and kids and awards what Zach Alphanakis have. you just have ferns. And then that scene ends with a fake bursting pipe in the studio that floods it. And the actors nearly drown is the bit.

And so the designers got plastic fake ferns because the real ferns would die. Yeah, and you don't want to kill a real fern. What kind of monster? What kind of sick, psychotic monsters, scum of the earth, lowest of the lowest of the low. would kill a fern. What sort of demonic scourge of the earth? Absolute, just depraved person, a shell of a human being could barely be someone who could contain a soul would ever kill a fern.

It's like, oh, you visited the Hague? What's it like? They mostly processed cases where someone killed two ferns for a joke. Right, right. That's the main thing. Right. I would never kill a fern or two ferns or possibly a third fern. The other eight are like, I'm glad it wasn't me today.

And then the interrupting ones like, burn, fern, fern, fern. Yeah. Yeah. Brett likes to make fun of me for this. But we had realized that we were going to have to move many, many months in advance of moving. Like, yeah, we're probably going to have to move at some point because, like, once, like, so I just stopped watering a fern.

He's like, you're going to water that fern? I'm like, why, we're moving? He's like, because it's, you're killing it. You're killing it, Katie. That's why. Like, yeah, but we're just going to move. He's like, yeah, and like half a year. In the movie, there's a lot of scenes of Zach Alphanekus carrying his ferns behind him

with a hand truck. Like, they're a burden to him. So you should have seen. that you would have known. I guess I have to watch this movie now. I've learned. I've grown and I've changed and I've become better. Yeah.

Because I don't, I try not to kill plants anymore. Like, I watered them actually. Oh, we all, we all try, you know. Yeah. We try. Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with

run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, fern reproduction is so strange and so unlike other plants. People's confusion about that helped create myths about fairies. Takeaway number two, the chain fern genus of fern species is one of nature's clearest examples of what we've nicknamed backward evolution, selecting for a trait and then selecting back away from it. Takeaway number three, a fern species called Blacknam Oriental is able to mine and refine toxic minerals. Its body is up to 5% the mineral. Takeaway number four, the U.S. and UK had a fern craze throughout the Victorian era, lasting almost a century.

Takeaway number five, the Between Two Ferns series of sketch comedy interviews and movie used real ferns for those except for one flooding the studio stunt. and then so many numbers about the hundreds of millions of years of fern evolution and history. Also the many millions of spores just one fern frond can launch. And the unfortunate scientific comparison between two different ferns mating and a human mating with a lemur. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. if you support this show at maximum fun.org.

Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is how one fern species and one incident in the Suez Crisis might decolonize New Zealand's flag. Visit sifpod.fod.ffun for that bonus show

for a library of more than 25 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at Maximumfund.org. Key sources this week include a few different books. I don't know if I named check all of them in the flow of the show and leaned on The Plant Lovers Guide to Ferns.

That's by botanist Richie Stephan and Sue Olson in collaboration with the UK Royal Botanic Gardens Q. Also leaned on the Peterson Field Guide to Fern's second edition. Also leaned on digital resources from the UC Berkeley Botanic Garden from the National Tropical Botanic Gardens of the U.S., which is a set of institutions in Hawaii and Florida. Further digital resources from the nonprofit Forests Canada, a feature for New Zealand Geographic by writer Patrick Brownsea. a wonderful talk by terrodologist Dr. Eric Shoupeltz of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and some amazing science writing from popular mechanics from grist.org and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.claan.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I

recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie-Lanape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of and I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people in life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is not that long ago. It's episode 288 about prunes. One fun fact there, a lot of what's now Silicon Valley, the tech industry there in Northern California, was built on top of the former prune belt of California, some of the greatest prune growing fields in the world.

So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-rewn. host Katie Golden's podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for editing this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you that. Maximum Fun.

A worker-owned network. Of artists-owned shows. Supported. Directly. By you.