Episode 57: Secret Seeds & Freaky Phalanges- Fern Folklore
Hello and welcome back to another episode of rooted! This week I wanted to dig into some of the stories that made me want to start the show- ferns.
There are a TON of varieties of these prehistoric cuties, and we will talk about some of them more in depth in future episodes, but for this week I wanted to really focus on the folklore because there is so much of it, and most of it is just very generally about ferns.
Before we dive into the stories, we will touch really quickly on a tiny bit of science, just to kind of explain where a lot of these stories come from.
Ferns are cryptogams, just like moss and lichen. They don’t flower or fruit, and have been around for about a million or so years before the first flowering plants popped up. As living fossils, they have taught us a lot, but we still have even more to learn about them.
For a really long time, we just could NOT figure out where ferns came from? LIke they didn’t have seeds, they didn't have fruit, and also no one had ever seen one just starting out?
We now know this is because ferns have spores, which germinate into little heart shaped plants that don't really have roots, and then mature INTO ferns…but before that, we kind of just assumed they were casually invisible until they just magically appeared…these - we’ll say interesting- beliefs…
For starters, people for a really long time believed that ferns seeds were not just REAL, but that they could also make PEOPLE invisible…
In most of the tales we’ve had from the middle ages in Europe, people we’re obsessed with the idea that ferns DID bloom, but only for like one night a year at midnight? There are some folx that say it’s on St. Johns’ eve, others on a random day in september, or whenever it wants..similarly, some people say its bright red and gets instantly snatched up by the devil, while others say it’s bright blue and there for anyone smart enough to stack up 12 pewter plants and wait patiently for it to release a single seed that magically falls through the 11 top plates to claim it.
Upon getting a fern seed, it was believed that holding onto it would grant you the power to remain unseen, enabling you to be a sneaky little shit whenever you wanted. This was seemingly most popular in England, with authors like William Shakespeare continuing to write about it well into the next century.
While brits were focused on remaining unseen, in other parts of the continent, folx were convinced fern seeds could help you to see things that would have otherwise been hidden. In one such tale, a lady decides to take a leisurely little sail on a sea that is apparently filled with slightly feral mer-children?!
While this woman is just minding her own business, knitting on the high seas as ANYONE would be doing, three little mer-children pop their heads up and scare the shit out of our crafting queen. Terrified, she accidentally kind of loses it and stabs them in the eyes with her knitting needles? And so then OF COURSE their dad gets super pissed and curses HER son to basically never fall in love, and instead to live in her basement and mope for eternity- truly a hell. ]
Deperate to find a way to make it right, she frantically collects some fern seeds, and then ROWS HERSELF OUT TO SEE to sprinkle them into the sea to repair those briney boy’s punctured eyeballs.
In a plot twist, their dad is actually super chill about the whole thing?! So upon his kids not being blind, he agrees to let her son be normal and fall in love, but only after he gets married..which for today is cruel, but back then really wasn't so bad.
Interestingly, in Scotland it WAS believed that ferns could help folks struggling with blindness and eye dryness by dipping a frond in egg whites and holding them over the eyes like the ooeist gooeist eye mask you never wanted to wear.
In another story, a russian farmer loses his cattle in a storm, and as he is traipsing around in a fern field feeling lost and sad, a fern seed somehow works it’s way into his shoe. As he keeps walking, he suddenly knows EXACTLY where to find his cows. So, after a quick little hike up the mountain, he is reunited with his cattle, then suddenly realizes he knows exactly where to find a long lost treasure, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s not even that far away! However, once he gets home to change his shoes, he forgets where it is- super bummer on that one for sure.
But, sometimes finding the treasure isn't all it’s cracked up to be. In another story a young boy schemes to get his grubby little hands on one of those rumored midnight blooms, but the devil does it first two years in a row. On the third year though, the boy gets his shit together and grabs it faster than the devil can get his hot little hands out of hades.
While that sounds awesome, and for a while it was, it quickly soured when the boy learned he wasn't allowed to share any of his endless wishes that the seed would grant, and if he did, the fern would disappear. Unfortunately, this meant that the boy grew to be selfish and lonely until the day he wished he would die- and since his every wish was granted, as soon as those words left his lips, the earth swallowed him whole.
Really a downer for that guy, but he’s not alone. In another russian tale, a man goes on the hunt for a fern seed to get some gold to make a ring for his girlfriend. Upon finding one after months and months of really long midnight hikes, he finally stumbled upon one at the SAME TIME as the devil and baba yaga- imagine how SCARY that race was? No thank you- but he is determined to win and he DOES. However, upon seeing all the treasure, but also the horrors those two have buried just below the surface our guy kinda lost his mind. He and his girlfriend didn’t work out, and honestly that was where they left the story- really not nice..
in an effort to not end on THAT note, I figured we could do one more story AND talk a little more about how we figured out spores.
On the story front, the hans christian anderson tale “ the travel companion” a young orphan sets out to find a new place for himself in the world. As he travels, he continually discovers the abject suffering and absolute suckage that comes with being an adult, and after a few too many deeply felt “I hate it here”s, he stumbles upon a mysterius man who offers to help him. After some wholesome bonding, the two walk through a village where they literally stumble into an old lady with a way too heavy cart carrying willow twigs and ferns.
Unfortunately, the old woman’s leg got broken in the fall, but luckily the traveler had a magical salve that knitted her bones back together. In exchange for their help, the woman offered them a reward. To the surprise of everyone around him, he asked for 3 fern fronds.
While that may seem like a wild choice, our companion was thinking ahead, as the next leg of their journey was through a dark and twisty forest known to be filled with malicious witches.
And wouldn't you know it, one night as the two were getting ready to sleep they are attacked by a scary witch. Luckily (I guess) the companion had his fronds, which he used to literally whip the witch into shape, leaving fern shaped welts on her body, which then caused her to revert back into the beautiful woman she was before she entered into a blood pact with satan.
While some may still struggle with the idea of witches not being evil, one thing we can all agree on is that ferns have spores.
We took ages to get to the bottom of it, but eventually this conundrum was solved when a german scientist decided to camp out in midsomar with a bunch of white sheets. As he hung out, he tried to see if he could find any magical glowing flowers or freaking falanges jutting out to snatch a bloom. However, in the morning he was intrigued to find some small blackish grey dots all over his sheets- spores, as we now know. He collected a few, took them back to study, and eventually let a few germinate, solving the mystery for us once and for all in the mid 1500s.
Today, I think we can all be glad for the history lessons and entertaining tales that ferns carry with them. Hopefully this mini deep dive has given you an even deeper appreciation for ferns, or at the very least you can see why they have me in such a chokehold.
That’s all I’ve got for this week, but I’ll be back with a more traditional episode soon. See you then!
