← Ologies with Alie Ward
Ologies with Alie Ward
Pteridology (FERNS) with Fay-Wei Li
01:03:33
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.”
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- [00:00]
A
Oh, hey, it's your old roommate who always found the best furniture on the side of the road. Alie Ward, did you know that you love ferns? Not yet. Sit tight, you're about to I'm going to 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 gametophyte. You're going to find out everything about that later. And they said that ferns were ferntastic. This is in the first five seconds of the video and I was like, they're on. And they wrote the 2025 book Lessons in Survival from the Earth's Most Adaptable Plants, and they're an associate professor at Cornell's Boyce Thompson Institute. 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 a dollar a month and you can leave questions for the ologist. 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 donate to a cause or two each week. Go from skeptic to electric in the new Toyota bz hesitant about going all electric, One drive can change your mind with up to an EPA estimated 314 mile range rating for front wheel drive models and available all wheel drive models with 338 horsepower, the Toyota BZ is built for confidence. Conveniently charge at home or on the go with access to a wide range of compatible public charging networks including Tesla superchargers. Inside, enjoy a 14 inch touchscreen and an available panoramic view moonroof. Learn more@toyota.com, the all new electric BZ Toyota let's go places. It's time for Cyber Monday Dell Technologies biggest sale of the year. So enjoy the lowest prices of the year on select PCs like the Dell 16 plus featuring Intel Core Ultra processors and with built in advanced features, it's the PC that helps you do more faster. They also have huge deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free free shipping, price, match guarantee and extra support. Shop now@dell.com deals okay, let's jump into pteridology. So the pter comes from the Greek word for a wing or a feather. So like pterodactyl or helicopter, helico which means spiral and pater which means wing. So if you didn't know. Yeah, the pter 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 pteridologists. 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 and a genome that makes no sense to me, at least with the absolutely charming, enthusiastic scholar, professor, researcher, fern advocate, and pteridologist, Dr. Fei Wei.
- [03:42]
B
Liquid, where are you right now?
- [04:04]
C
I'm right now in North Carolina. I'm actually in the process of moving my lab to Duke University.
- [04:09]
B
Does North Carolina have good ferns? I feel like I don't even know.
- [04:13]
A
If North Carolina has ferns.
- [04:14]
C
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.
- [04:23]
B
What? No.
- [04:25]
C
Yeah, yeah. Arizona, for example, has one of the highest ferns, fern diversity.
- [04:30]
B
I thought ferns needed a lot of darkness and water. And those are like two things Arizona does not have.
- [04:37]
C
Well, so they have a, what we call a calenhoid 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.
- [04:50]
B
What do they look like?
- [04:53]
C
Usually they look really crispy. They can lose their water up to 90% and I can still come back alive. So if you, for example, have a hike in a desert in Arizona, Texas, whatever, you see some crispy ferns, put them in a ziploc bag or pour some water over it, they might come back. Just green it up.
- [05:13]
B
Oh, my gosh. Does moss do that as well? Can't moss dehydrate and rehydrate a lot?
- [05:19]
C
Yeah, yeah. In many ways they're like mosses that had resurrection ferns. They look dead, but then they still can come back.
- [05:27]
B
Well, what a name. What a compelling name.
- [05:29]
A
Like zombie coming back from the dead.
- [05:32]
B
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 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.
- [05:49]
C
Yeah, I mean, there are many ways to define a ferns. You can define it by looking at what it doesn't. They don't have seeds, they don't produce flowers. But the most definitive way to define a fern is their sex life. Let me hear it. Okay, well, they don't have flowers. Right? And flowers where the sex happens. The sperm will fertilize the egg as you have the next generations. Ferns don't have flowers. And the ferny ferns you see outside, they are diploids. They have two set of chromosomes, like flying plants and humans, for example, but they have this entirely different generations that we call the gametophyte phase. And a gamdophyte is a haploid.
- [06:27]
A
So diploid D2 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, gametophytes, which means like a sexy plant. And it's easy to remember because gametophytes 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, gametophytes, structures of sexual independence.
- [07:02]
C
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 9 of flowers, but in a gamdo 5 phase.
- [07:18]
B
And does that come out as the spores that you see, that powdery brown stuff on the back of the leaves?
- [07:23]
C
Right, exactly. So the spores will germinate into gambophytes, and the gambophytes are free living. They will produce egg and sperms, and they will fertilize and have become a zygote, and a zygote will become the ferny ferns you see outside. So they basically have two independent generations, the haploid phase and the diploid phase.
- [07:46]
B
And is this an older type of reproduction, or is it just divergent evolution? Or is this something that's kind of ancestral.
- [07:57]
C
Only in ferns you have these two separate generations living independent with each other, and that's what makes them unique. That exactly defines a fern.
- [08:06]
B
What is their basic anatomy? Do they have a rhizome or do they have roots? If you had to, like give the basic parts of a fern.
- [08:14]
C
Okay, so I guess the textbook ferns will have a horizontal rhizome. And the rhizome we can think about is a stem. And then you have leaf, which is a fern, fronds coming out, and then beneath it you have the roots. So a rhizome stem, roots coming down and the leaf coming out. Okay, that's a basic principle there. And the roots are true roots. They are not like a brow roots, which is a rhizoid.
- [08:40]
B
Oh, okay, so that's a misconception that they don't have roots.
- [08:43]
C
They have proper vasculatures in their root system.
- [08:46]
A
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.
- [09:17]
B
I love also that you call them mossy mosses and ferny ferns.
- [09:20]
C
Yeah.
- [09:22]
B
Like, to get an idea of, like, what they look like.
- [09:25]
C
And the fern gambophytes, where the haplophytes, they do look in many ways like a brow fight.
- [09:31]
B
And we had a great episode about moss a few years ago, and I'd never considered what their life cycle was like or how rich in 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 made it so that you are an expert in. Oh, you're a pteridologist?
- [10:00]
C
I'm a toadologist, yes. Yeah. So I grew up in Taiwan. There's just so many fern diversity in Taiwan. So to put it into perspective, Taiwan has 800 fern species. Taiwan is like a third size of New York State. The whole North America has only 400 species. So this tiny island has double the fern diversity compared to USA and so I just really got really Fascinated by 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 are so many of them and I just wanted to identify them, learn more about them, and that's how I become hooked with ferns.
- [10:46]
B
Did your parents get you plant books and were they. Would you come back to the house with like all these plants?
- [10:54]
C
They did. They. They gave me many field guides. And that's. Yeah.
- [11:00]
B
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?
- [11:20]
C
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 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. No.
- [11:53]
B
How do you tell? Are you able to take a little fragment of it and do any DNA now on it to differentiate it?
- [11:59]
C
Exactly. That's the beauty of herbarium specimens. They preserve so much information. The DNA you can get, we can get DNA from specimens, as always, over 100 years old specimens. And they have the locality. We know where they come from. They have the spores. 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.
- [12:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [12:30]
C
One time we discovered a new genus and my advisor and I, we decided to name it after Lady Gaga. So the genus is called Gaga?
- [12:41]
A
No.
- [12:43]
B
That's amazing. Was your advisor a Lady Gaga fan or did you know that this is a good move for ferns?
- [12:52]
C
She's a deep Lady Gaga fan. The two things we talk about when I was a graduate student is her cat and Lady Gaga's newest album.
- [13:03]
B
Did Lady Gaga ever find out about that?
- [13:05]
C
Yes, she was interviewed several times and people asked her about the Gaga friends. And yeah, she acknowledged this. And the Gaga friends would describe, they have a really odd reproductive methods and they bypass a lot of sexual reproductions. And so Lydiga made a comment about the Gaga fern, saying they are sexless.
- [13:28]
A
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 Gaga 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 second album, Born this Way, is enormously empowering, especially for disenfranchised people in communities like LGBTQ 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 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 Comeda fights make male and female sex cells proof that nature is not on a binary.
- [14:42]
B
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. Or is a spore, Is a spore or is a spore, do they all look the same?
- [15:08]
C
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 I 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.
- [15:44]
A
So to recap, those little bumps on the underside of a fern leaf, those are called sori. 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 gametophyte 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.
- [16:29]
B
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 pteridologists in conservation and taxonomy of it? What makes a fern person kind of come alive with their research?
- [16:51]
C
Yeah, so in the past, we've done many different aspects of fern biology. We've done some taxonomy, we describe species, looking at how those different species relate to each other. And nowadays we focus a lot on their genomic side. Ferns are weird. There's a fern species called Ophioglossum reticulatum. It has 1400 chromosomes. What? So humans have 46. Right? What? And then this guy has 1400 chromosomes. And just why? Why do I 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 3 billions of different letters.
- [17:36]
A
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. 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.
- [17:58]
C
But this fern species has 160 billion letters, like a lot bigger than a human genome. Why? Right. And that's something I want to figure out. How do I do this?
- [18:12]
A
So, unraveling that DNA mystery, that's in the future of ferns. But what about tales of ferns past?
- [18:19]
B
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?
- [18:32]
C
Well, yes and no. So ferns are both really old and also really young. Tell me everything you know. They are old, in a sense. You can trace the whole lineage back to carbonate forest, like 300 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 that fueling the civilizations of human beings.
- [18:58]
A
Wow.
- [18:59]
C
Anyway, so they dominate Earth. And then in Cretaceous, like, 100 million years ago, flowering plants come along and they Bad. They are bullies. They push ferns out so they become the dominant actors of a forest and ferns have to figure out what to do next. So they went understory and they kind of staging a comeback when they were understory. And they adapt to really low lying environments and they flourish and they diversify in a low lying environment. And so most of the fern species, most of the friend lineage we see today are actually really younger than the flowering plants.
- [19:39]
B
Oh, because they had to adapt to it.
- [19:41]
C
Exactly. We call them diversifying. The shadow of angiosperms in the shadow of flowering plants.
- [19:47]
A
Wow.
- [19:48]
C
Yeah. So they're young.
- [19:49]
B
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.
- [19:54]
C
You are wrong.
- [19:56]
A
So ferns themselves have been on Earth for 400 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.
- [20:14]
B
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?
- [20:24]
C
Yeah, yeah. Every time that the sheer number of species just blew me away again and again. You walk into a little 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.
- [20:50]
B
What's the best way to eat a fiddlehead?
- [20:51]
C
Okay, I guess I need to clarify. So not all fiddleheads are edible. Some are, all right, Toxic and carcinogenic. In eastern US in the spring, you will go out and pick fetal heads, right? So just make sure that you pick the right ones. Don't pick the toxic one. But the fetal heads we eat in the U.S. for example, is the species called Matsuzia strufiopteris or the common name is ostrich ferns. And the best way to cook it, I think, is first you need to blanch them. They're very tanning, a lot of tanning, and you want to get rid of them. And then I will add some butter, some feto has, some shrimps, some pasta together, mix it up, it's good. It's crunchy, but also a bit slimy. So it's that really interesting balance that I really like.
- [21:46]
B
Kind of like okra a little bit. Have you ever had okra?
- [21:50]
C
Okra is too slimy. But I think feta head is too slimy. Yeah, like the crown tube bit is better.
- [21:56]
B
Do a lot of animals go out munching on fiddleheads? Who eats ferns? In terms of, like, evolution, ferns are.
- [22:04]
C
Famous for not being eaten.
- [22:07]
A
Really.
- [22:07]
C
So I mentioned some fiddleheads. Some ferns are toxic. Right. And they are toxic for reasons they don't want to be eaten. Ferns are also very famous for having very little herbivory.
- [22:19]
B
What does that mean?
- [22:20]
C
Don't get eaten? Very little insect eat them.
- [22:24]
B
Oh, okay.
- [22:24]
C
So 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 sun has got chewed up pretty badly. And so the comparisons, the contrast, 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. They produce a lot of corns and soybeans in the U.S. and they got really interested in ferns because they realized no one eat ferns. But why? Right. And so they develop very sophisticated screening pipeline. So they're able to identify a number of insect cytoproteins from ferns. And they were able to put this in corns. And their new generation of corn is super resistant to a lot of like foam army worms and so on. So probably in the future, maybe the corns you are eating has a bit of fern DNA in it.
- [23:25]
B
Like kind of transgenic.
- [23:27]
C
Transgenic, yeah, kind of.
- [23:29]
B
So you're eating a little bit of fern DNA, which then does that mean that they can use fewer insecticides?
- [23:35]
C
Exactly.
- [23:36]
B
And pesticides on it.
- [23:37]
C
That's the whole point. Wow.
- [23:40]
B
I mean, you'd think ferns have so many genes to spare, you know, they have so many extra. Some of them, they're like, take a couple. We're fine. You guys have 46. We're fine.
- [23:50]
A
Yeah.
- [23:51]
B
What about when it comes to ferns in the media, ferngully 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.
- [24:04]
C
To be honest, I've heard about those movies, but never watched them. I didn't grow up in the U.S. right. So.
- [24:09]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [24:12]
C
Between two ferns. That's. I guess that's the. The one. I. I know between two ferns. I'm your host, Keanu Ree. I'm your host, Zach Galifianakis. And my guest today is Keanu Reeves.
- [24:24]
A
Thank you for being here.
- [24:25]
C
Thanks for having me here. On a scale of one to a hundred, how many words do you know? One to a hundred. But do you know 50 words?
- [24:34]
A
Do you know 75 words?
- [24:35]
C
They're funny as hell. So ferns in between two ferns. By the two ferns that said to be on the sides, they are Nephrolippus codifolia. So it's the common den 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 19th centuries. And that shipment contains a lot of really weird variety of Boston ferns. Some of them are droopy, some of them are highly dissected, some are crested, 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 friends. There's over a million Boston friends being sold and growing in just the Asian side of us alone. So that was extremely popular firms back then. And still, I guess it's still pretty popular now.
- [25:48]
B
Are they hard to take care of?
- [25:52]
C
I mean, yeah, maybe, perhaps not. So I started ferns by killing them.
- [25:59]
A
Okay.
- [26:00]
C
I cannot grow ferns in the house. My wife just couldn't understand why a fern doctor keep killing her ferns.
- [26:12]
B
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.
- [26:24]
A
Plant.
- [26:24]
B
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.
- [26:33]
C
Just if I'm good at it, I could made a lot of money. So I don't know if you've seen the staghorn ferns.
- [26:40]
A
So they're called staghorn ferns because they look kind of loby, like reindeer antlers or a very large frise salad. And colonies of staghorn ferns in the wild can divide labor, with the upper fronds getting waxy and directing rainwater downward to spongier staghorns below it. But not in the wild. Staghorns 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 staghorn 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 staghorn Fern as the ultimate natural statement piece. Center stage. So staghorns, the fern du jour, it's.
- [27:33]
C
Getting really popular in Asia. So they usually are mounted on the, on the wooden plaque and they have the antelope shaped leaf coming out. So really like a deer mounted 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 stackhorn ferns that was sold over US$300,000.
- [28:03]
A
No.
- [28:04]
C
So there's a total staghorn firm craze fever in some part of Asian countries right now. So if I'm good at this. Yeah, I mean, I can make serious money.
- [28:17]
B
You can retire early. But I'm not 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, die hard? Like, I'm a fern person and not an angiosporophile. Do ferns have their, like, street team that loves them?
- [28:40]
C
Yeah, so. So there's an 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, the fern people have the reputations of being really rowdy and just like all stick to each other.
- [29:04]
B
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 Fernando? Is that great name?
- [29:16]
C
It was, yeah. I, I mean, we have a daughter and then I propose to my wife, maybe we should name it them her Ferns. But then because I also been killing a lot of ferns in the house, so she doesn't feel it's a, it's a good idea.
- [29:35]
B
She's like, we'll name her Maggie. We'll name her anything, anything. Daisy, something.
- [29:41]
C
Yeah, yeah. Something cannot be killed.
- [29:44]
B
What about, you know, speaking of dead ferns, like, how are they doing out there?
- [29:49]
C
Yeah, it's a serious issue. There are a lot of endangered fern species. To give you an example, there's Halloween just passed. But if you walk around southern Florida and you'll be very lucky to see a spooky green hen coming out from palm trees. And those are like Keroglossa palmata. It's a very endangered fern species in Florida. And it looks just like a hen dangling down. Super cool. It's one of the reasons they got so endangered is because over collections, because it looks so weird, people want to collect them and then grow them. It just doesn't grow well outside of the native habitats and obviously the deconstructions of the swamps. The drainage of swamps also didn't help.
- [30:40]
B
Is there a way to try to cultivate those and reintroduce them, or is that just really, really hard to do?
- [30:48]
C
There are some progress. So in upstate New York, there's a very endangered species called Asplanium scolopendrium, 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, there's been some process of reintroducing the native American ones to the habitat.
- [31:17]
A
And one 2017 thesis I read titled Experimental Reintroduction of American Harts Tongue Fernando, Factors Affecting Successful Establishment of Transplants, noted that the reintroduction success varied based on partly how robust 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 2025 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.
- [31:53]
B
Obviously, every year ecology changes more and more, and it's interesting to think how much, 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.
- [32:15]
A
And we will get to your questions, patrons, in a moment. But first, let's donate to a cause of the ologist's 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 non vascular 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. Oh, you got a dream. You need a domain. Before I ever started Ologies, I was like, I need to do a website. But I procrastinated for years because I thought it was a lot harder. And then I heard about Squarespace on another podcast.
- [32:59]
B
Boom.
- [32:59]
A
I made a website overnight. Squarespace also has domains. They make it easy to find the best name for your business at a fair, all inclusive price with no weird hidden fees or add ons. You just get your domain. They also have such good design tools. Anyone can build a business. Really beautiful professional website. That fits their brand or business. They do have blueprint AI which is an AI enhanced design partner, or they have a library of professionally designed award winning website templates. It's so great to see all these.
- [33:30]
B
Options of like how you want your.
- [33:32]
A
Website to come across and it's so easy to tweak it into exactly what you need. Whether you're going to run like a full e commerce business or if you just need a website so that people can find your stuff or your research or your art. Squarespace Love them. So head to squarespace.com ologies for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code ologies to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. I believe in you. Listen. I get your holiday drill. You tell yourself you're going to get the most thoughtful gift ever. You panic at the last minute you give someone a gift card. This year. Skip the panic. Give the most thoughtful gift ever and get an Aura frame. You have unlimited free photo and video uploads. You just download this Aura app, connect to Wi Fi. It's the easiest app ever. You just start adding pictures in a few seconds. Also, if you're getting Aura frames as a gift, they can be personalized with this custom message that appears when it's first turned on. I also give Aura frames as gifts all the time.
- [34:27]
B
I love them. Recently I gave some to my sisters.
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A
In law and they use it exclusively for photos of their cat and their cat stares at the frame of pictures of himself. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen. So for a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off of Aura's best selling Carver mat frames named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code Ologies at checkout. So that's a U R A frames.com promo code Ologies this deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning Ologies at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Ologies is brought to you by Strawberry Me. If your career were a plant. How's it doing? Is it neglected? Is it parched? Is it over watered? What's going on? I know you want to keep that alive and career growth is challenging. Inertia is real, but nothing changes unless you change it. I love career coaching. It has absolutely changed my life. I wouldn't have started Ologies if it weren't for Career coaching and Strawberry Me Career coaching can help you get out of the career void. Now, Strawberry Me, they match you with a certified career coach, a real human. They are not an AI with questionable motives. And your career coach listens. They help identify what blocks you have and then they help you create a plan. And you can learn how to make small steps for a big change over time. And they hold you accountable so you don't just like, think. Think about the thing you do. The thing. I met with a Strawberry Me coach and instantly loved her. It's never a bad time to brush up on it. I just started Strawberry Me to get over some fears of continuing to expand. So if you're waiting for the right moment to level up, this is it. Go to Strawberry Me Ologies and claim your $50 credit. That's strawberry Me Ologies. You got this. Have you ever gotten someone a gift and then you're like, I want that for me. I get it. This happens when you get quints. And that's because quince has pretty much your whole list covered. They have Mongolian cashmere sweaters for $50 when you'd normally pay like 200 bucks for them. Italian wool coats. The look is designer. They feel amazing. They're made with premium materials. Also, just like everything at Quince, you go, what a good deal. What great quality. Wow, we're really doing it. I love quint. I have at least five Mongolian cashmere sweaters from them. Several of my pants are quint. I've got quint dresses. And also my sister in law who's in fashion loves quint too. And every time I see her and I hug her and she's wearing a cashmere sweater, I go, quince. And she goes, you know it. Love quint. If you have to get gifts for people, it's so affordable. It's so beautiful. So find gifts so good you'll want to keep them with quints. Go to Quintessential.com Ologies for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. So that's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com Ologies to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Ologies you know how you have certain rituals that you do every morning and then you throw the holidays into it and you're like, I'm in an airport. I'm sleeping on a foldout couch in a basement. Your rituals and your routines are hard to keep up with. But enter ritual the obsessively researched multivitamin. Ritual's Essential Multis have the nutrients most of us don't get enough of from food. They have clean, absorbable forms. They don't have shady additives or ingredients that can actually do more harm to your body than good. And Rituals essential for women 18/ multi contains nine key nutrients in two delayed release capsules designed for optimal absorption. And I love that it's a female founded B Corp. I take them in the morning sometimes with a Ritual protein shake, but easy to put in your suitcase if you're on the road and you are eating garbage. So instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. My listeners get early access to their Black Friday sale for 40% off your first month at ritual.comologies that's ritual.comologies for 40% off your first month. So don't miss out on their best sale of the season. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. We have to say that. Okay, if you would like to ask a question of the ologist before we record, you can hop 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.
- [38:56]
B
And let's see. And 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 the Empress of Smallwood wanted to know, can you collect fern spores to germinate more spores, more ferns? Someone else asked what they can do to prevent their native ferns from spreading through the rest of the garden. But that I imagine just like gotta.
- [39:34]
A
Pluck em the father of Mish the fish looking at you and your ferns.
- [39:39]
B
If you want a fern gully, can you try to make one?
- [39:43]
C
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 peat moss maybe and some really moist soil. And then you can sprinkle the ferns on top of them and keep the lid on so the whole environment is really humid and hopefully that can get you some little fern gamma fights. So you'll see the fern gamma fight ferns so those are like mossy things coming out from the ground. They would not look like a ferns. In the beginning. You'll be looking at really filmy green sheets on the soil. But some ferns have green spores, like the matusias, 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.
- [40:40]
B
So do you kind of have to figure out which species you've got and then learn what works best for that species? Does it vary a little bit?
- [40:47]
C
Definitely, yeah.
- [40:48]
B
Okay.
- [40:48]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [40:49]
B
Well, on the topic of those gametophytes.
- [40:51]
C
Hi, this is Tommy and McElrath. We want to know why ferns have done so well and lasted so long evolutionarily over the years.
- [41:05]
A
We're from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and many more of you, including Jenna Yu, Maddie, a good soup moth, Katie Munoz, Brennan Holz Scalebar, Amy Arugula, Clemens V. Redhead scientist.
- [41:14]
B
And Matt Schmidt from Wellington, New Zealand, wanted to know what or how gametophytes.
- [41:22]
C
Give ferns a leg up in sexual reproduction.
- [41:26]
B
Thanks. What is it about them that has led to their survival?
- [41:31]
C
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 will germinate into a gametophyte. And the gametophytes 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.
- [42:08]
B
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?
- [42:19]
C
Oh, yeah, it creates a lot of issues. Okay, because you self fertilize, right? 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.
- [42:38]
A
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 gametophyte 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.
- [43:02]
C
So that's problematic in the long run, but if you want to just colonize somewhere really fast, you got it.
- [43:09]
B
Gets the job done.
- [43:10]
C
Yeah.
- [43:10]
B
And Matt Schmidt is from New Zealand.
- [43:14]
A
Have you been to New Zealand?
- [43:16]
C
No.
- [43:16]
A
Me neither.
- [43:18]
C
It's a great place to look at ferns. They have so many cool ferns in New Zealand.
- [43:22]
B
That was my next question. Andy Pepper, Zy, Sarah Manns, Fiona Roji, 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 Cappello 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?
- [44:03]
C
I wish. I work 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 ferns on them. The rugby teams have the fern leaf on the jersey. It's amazing.
- [44:20]
A
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.
- [44:59]
B
Does New Zealand just have, like, great habitat for ferns?
- [45:03]
C
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 appears in that place.
- [45:17]
B
And so kind of like what you were saying, if a spore lands on an island, turns into a gametophyte, 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.
- [45:33]
C
Yeah, exactly. They kind of adapt to the very specific habitats and have interesting morphology.
- [45:41]
B
What about invasive ones? Rhys Parini, Justin Bowen, Val B. Listening Lisa Gorman, potato Puffer and Earl of Gramalkin 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? Take it over my garden. Because they're so good at that reproduction. Are there ever like, whoa, we got too many of this fern here?
- [46:04]
C
There are several really nasty ferns. So there's one species called Ligonia microphyllum, native in Asia, but in Florida is killing forest. 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.
- [46:38]
A
Each frond of this old world climbing fern, which can smother whatever was growing underneath its canopy, can be 125ft long. South Florida hates these things.
- [46:50]
C
So, yeah, it's a horrible, horrible ferns. But in their native habitats, they are well behaved, just for some reasons. When they arrived Florida, they went wild. Spring break. So that's one. There's another fern species called Salvina molasta. I guess as a name implies, Molasta is not a good fern. This is aquatic ferns that float on top of water.
- [47:14]
B
Oh, wow.
- [47:15]
C
It's native in Brazil, and it has caused trillions of dollars of damage around the world. In Australia and 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.
- [47:37]
B
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.
- [47:54]
C
Well, but there are some weedy ferns that kind of maybe can save the Earth a bit. So there's a fern called azolla. It's also aquatic ferns. They float around. 50 million years ago, Earth was a much warmer place, and the Arctic was actually a big freshwater lake. And there was a huge azolla bloom during that time. And the geologists estimated that during that azolla boom, that firm 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 climate to a Now cooler environments. Right now the Arctic is frozen mostly for now. So yeah, they have played big roles. Their weediness have played a big role in Earth geological history.
- [48:49]
B
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 Gramilkin.
- [48:56]
A
Mads first time question asker, JMO and.
- [48:58]
B
Cynthia Z. Cynthia Z. All caps. All caps. Three exclamation points. Please tell me more about ant ferns. I fell in love instantly with Lecanopterus.
- [49:12]
C
Genus Lecanopterus. Yeah.
- [49:15]
B
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.
- [49:41]
C
Yeah, so like an obsteras that dimensions have a really interesting rhizome structures. So usually rhizome is really like a thing like a pencil, Right. Running on the grounds or running on trees. But a rhizome of inference, like anopterisation, 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. So if there's any aphids, some other insects want to eat the ferns, the ants will fight them off. So it's kind of a symbiotic interaction. And the cool thing about this is this evolved multiple times in ferns evolutionary histories. There's another fern genus called Solanopterus, so Solenopterus solenum, the rhizome like a tomato, 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.
- [50:50]
B
That's so cool that it's like a condo.
- [50:52]
C
Yeah, exactly. And some ferns have nectar, so they have either very specialized nectar structures or sometimes just secrete really sugary liquids. Again, they are enticing ants to come over, hoping they will be their bodyguard.
- [51:07]
A
We need you here.
- [51:09]
B
And then in terms of other plants that they like to live with, do climbing ferns benefit some trees? 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?
- [51:25]
C
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 trees. Right, the pineapple things. They kind of like upside down hats. And they will collect a lot of leaders. So those are in the Neotropics. In Asian Tropics, you have the bird nest ferns. They look kind of similar. They have big leaves and the overlapping leaves. So they collect a lot of leaf leaders on the trees. And because of that, some frogs like to live specifically on those Burnett sperms. And a lot of insects like to live in that habitat. Orchids also like to hang down from those burnest ferns. And the azolla ferns I mentioned, the one that cooled down the earth, they have a very specific cyanobacteria that live inside of them. So the cyanobacteria, the photosynthetic cyanobacteria, they can fix nitrogens, meaning they can turn nitrogen gas into ammonia. And only a few bacteria can do that. And essentially azolla ferns have their own fertilizers. So they carry their symbiotics 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 azolla there and azolla will grow and they will fix nitrogen, fully symbiotic. And the bacteria and they will drain the water and azolla will come down to the soil and it will decompose, release all the fixed nitrogens, and they'll plant the rice. Ah, so this is a very clever way to boost your productivity.
- [53:22]
B
It's like its own plant fertilizer. Thanks for that. It's like miracle grow or something. But for bigger scale, what about size? Like mouse Paxton Marissa Jacobson Reece Perini Ranger of France Jenna Congdon Lunar Crumpet Sustainable Sirenian 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?
- [53:52]
C
The biggest one I think would be the tree ferns.
- [53:55]
B
Oh, okay.
- [53:56]
C
The silver ferns in New Zealand, those are tree ferns. They have tree fern forest, which is awesome. And the trunk of those tree ferns, they don't have woods, so they don't produce any woods at all. The fang you see on the trunk is actually roots. So imagine a fern Growing up. And when they're growing up, the apex will actually shoot down roots from the top and the roots would serve as a support structures. And that's how the tree trunk is made. In tree ferns, it's mostly just roots.
- [54:29]
B
Oh, wow.
- [54:30]
C
The stem itself is not actually very big. Yeah. And those roots are really strong roots. They're just not the wimpy roots you see. They are reinforced roots with lots of fibers in them.
- [54:43]
B
What about, let's see, fractal pattern, M. Rothamel, Paulina Tarr, Kaylee Bell, Claire Rishy wanted to know. Claire says fern math, Fibonacci sequence, Barnsley fern. Why are these plants so mathematical? And yeah, why do ferns and wanted to know embody fractal patterns? What's going on there?
- [55:06]
C
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 Hetherington from Edinburgh. They have a beautiful paper about the mathematics and math in fossil ferns.
- [55:22]
A
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 Rafael Cruz and Sandy Hetherington 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 the 1988 book Fractals Everywhere by a mathematician named Michael Barnsley, 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 pteridologist, 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 you're Dr. Lee's wife. So me not being a pteridologist 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 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. 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.
- [57:50]
B
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 the ologist have one? It's actually not a hard question. Wants to know if you have a fern tattoo.
- [58:05]
C
I do not have a fern tattoo.
- [58:07]
B
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 or your lab is going to close down. What fern would you get a tattoo of?
- [58:23]
C
I don't get a Lady Gaga fern tattoo. And then maybe I will show it to Lady Gaga saying, please fund my lab.
- [58:35]
B
Stephanie, fund the lab. Okay, so no fern tattoos. Do any of your grad students or postdocs anyone have fern tattoos? Oh, yeah, yeah, they do.
- [58:47]
C
They will show off their fern tattoos. Yeah, they will lift their shirts saying, hey, see what I got. But I mean, if you want to get a temporary one, there's a cool way to do it. How so? Earlier I mentioned there are some ferns living in a 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 fern in the desert and you flip it over and you see bright yellow or bright white, pick it up and then you can put on your pants, put on your shorts and just smash it. And then they will leave the impressions of that foreigner on your shirts or pants and this beautiful.
- [59:36]
B
It's beautiful and it's temporary.
- [59:38]
A
And it's free.
- [59:39]
C
It's temporary. Yeah. Just don't do it in a national park.
- [59:43]
B
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.
- [59:53]
C
Yeah.
- [59:53]
B
What about Mads and Cast the Dog? Nerd. Rowan Tree. Danny C. Murder Birder. So many people.
- [60:03]
A
Eliraptor. Sustainable. Sirenian.
- [60:05]
B
I want to 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 going to be like, oh, really interesting. But do you have a favorite fern that you just are like close to your heart?
- [60:21]
C
I cannot answer that question. It's like, who's your favorite child? Kind of questions.
- [60:26]
B
No, no, they're all good. Okay, what about smell again? Addy Capello. Matt Mesnick, first time question asker, Brenna Hull wanted to know. Brenna said, why do ferns have that incredible fern smell? And Matt Mesnick's wife said, why do crushed up ferns smell so delicious?
- [60:45]
C
Okay, so the first question is, I have, I, I don't know what kind of nose this person has, but I. Fern smell. I recently got a candle from anthropology that has a label as a fern, but now look at the ingredient, 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 crush on leaves. You have the hay scented smell. But that's very specific for this, for that fern species. Some ferns, they are sweet. So if you want to taste it, there's a species called Polypodium glycyrrhiza. So glycyrrhiza means sugar rhizome and it has like licorice taste to it. In the flora of North America, if you look at the keys, how to identify the species, there's 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.
- [61:53]
B
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.
- [62:07]
C
Definitely.
- [62:08]
B
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 asks, what causes some of them to close up when they're touched?
- [62:23]
C
Okay, so they are not ferns. They are mimosa. It's a ligum plant. So here you go.
- [62:30]
B
There you go. Mistaken identity, Right?
- [62:35]
C
Well, they do have that feathery dissected leaves, so I guess. Yeah.
- [62:41]
B
Is that. What is the name of that leaf structure? Is it pinnate or.
- [62:46]
C
Pinnate? Pinnatifies. Yes.
- [62:48]
B
Okay. 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?
- [63:10]
C
I would go to New Zealand.
- [63:11]
B
New Zealand. Yeah.
- [63:13]
C
Just die in New Zealand.
- [63:15]
B
Yeah. Okay, New Zealand.
- [63:17]
A
There you go.
- [63:18]
B
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 deodato 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?
- [63:38]
A
This is a trick question.
- [63:39]
C
I have one.
- [63:40]
B
Well, there you go. You like mine?
- [63:49]
C
Wow, that's obnoxious.
- [63:52]
B
That's the best.
- [63:55]
C
It's right here if you want to see.
- [63:58]
B
Yes, dude. There you go. Get your phone book.
- [64:02]
A
The book is called Lessons in Survival from Earth's Most Adaptable Plants. And it has chapters on ferns on trees, Ferns as Trees, desert ferns, Ferns and Animals, Humans and 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.
- [64:30]
C
But in terms of field guide, there was a new one by Emily Sessa from New York Botanical Garden, and that's a beautiful fern guide you should get.
- [64:39]
B
Does Zach Galifianakis know of your work?
- [64:42]
C
No.
- [64:43]
B
No, no. I think someone needs to tell him.
- [64:45]
C
I know his work. I know his work. He doesn't know mine.
- [64:48]
B
You need to get him a copy of your book.
- [64:51]
C
Yeah.
- [64:52]
B
If he doesn't have it.
- [64:53]
C
Yeah.
- [64:54]
B
I want him to sit between two copies of your fern book and an interview.
- [64:58]
C
Lady Gaga.
- [64:59]
B
Yes, an interview Lady Gaga.
- [65:00]
A
Oh, my God.
- [65:01]
B
You can be on set as a consultant.
- [65:04]
C
I Mean the federal funding is going away and we all need money to do research.
- [65:09]
B
Yeah.
- [65:09]
C
So whatever it takes, man. Whatever it takes.
- [65:13]
B
Whatever it takes. We'll send it up the chain where like if anyone listening to this knows Zachalifianakis and or Lady Gaga, please, please.
- [65:21]
C
Firm research in trouble.
- [65:23]
B
Well, that, you know, the last questions I always ask are 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?
- [65:43]
C
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 from nsf, usda, doae those federal agencies and they just don't have enough money to fund all the good research projects. And some foreign research can really change things. The insecticidal things I mentioned earlier has the actual practical translations into agriculture. Some people are studying symbiosis with cyanobacteria. How if we can engineer a symbiosis of cyanobacteria with some corn plants maybe or rice plants, that will also change how we do our agriculture. So a lot of this have real translations to real world. And also friend 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 are listening, help us out.
- [66:56]
B
What about the best thing? What do you love? What keeps you going?
- [67:00]
C
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 and.
- [67:13]
B
I love that fern people are rowdy and stick together. That's so great. There's going to 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.
- [67:29]
C
Well, join American Fern Society. Oh my God.
- [67:32]
B
Get your book. This is amazing. 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.
- [67:46]
A
Thank you.
- [67:47]
B
Get the.
- [67:50]
A
So ask ferntastic 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@alieworn.com Ologies Pteridology or we're Ologies on Instagram @bluesky I'm Le Ward on both. We have shorter kid friendly episodes of Ologies called Smallogies 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@ologiesmerch.com and you can join our Patreon for a dollar at patreon.com Ologies Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Avileen Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Noel Dilworth keeps us evolving through time as scheduling producer. Managing Director. Susan Hale is the fractal path that moves us forward. Jake Chafee 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 in Brooklyn a couple 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. 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 and 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, which had been originally conceived as an 8 minute roll. 14 hours of improv. I can't even imagine the vibe in the room. 14 hours and I can't return an email.
- [70:12]
B
Okay, I'm off. Bye bye. Pachydermatology, Homeology, Cryptozoology, Litology, Nanotechnology, Meteorology, Olfactology, Mapology Cereal. Who killed Fern?
- [70:35]
D
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- [71:34]
B
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