Ferns were among the earliest plants and evolved millions of years ago. They were a major part of early forests in the days of the dinosaurs and perhaps the first to come back after the great asteroid ...

Probably the first pioneer plants to arrive in Hawaii were mosses and ferns. Ferns have been around for over 360 million years. Giant tree fern forests were common for millions of years but they gave ...

Plant biologists report that a species of tree fern found only in Panama reanimates its own dead leaf fronds, converting them into root structures that feed the mother plant. The fern, Cyathea ...

Danaea ubatubensis, one of the recently described fern species, is known only from a small area of coastal rainforest in Brazil. A large proportion of the species in the area are endemic. Researchers ...

a woman touches a fern frond in a garden - Tom Werner/Getty Images As gardeners feel a nip of fall in the air, their thoughts turn to garden cleanup, preparing beds and plants for winter, and setting ...

Fern species represent one of the most diverse and evolutionarily significant lineages of vascular plants. Over recent decades, phylogenetic studies have endeavoured to elucidate the evolutionary ...

This colorscape of tubes and grooves is a cross section through the reproductive region of a fern. Ferns use spores to reproduce and spread, and here we can see these spores (blue/purple) encased in ...

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James Dalling and his colleagues discovered that some tree ferns recycle their dead fronds into roots. The researchers call these ...