The fern

📖 In short

The fern is a pretty green plant with no flowers or seeds, with feathery leaves divided into lots of little leaflets. It likes damp, shady places in forests. It's one of the oldest plants on Earth, older than the dinosaurs!

🤩 Did you know?

There are about 10 thousand kinds of ferns in the world.
Ferns appeared on Earth more than 350 million years ago.
Tree ferns can be 25 meters tall.
Many people keep ferns as pretty houseplants.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 No seeds

Ferns don't make seeds; they spread with tiny specks called spores. Look under a fern leaf and you may see little brown dots in rows, holding thousands of spores.

🔍 The curled leaf

When a new fern leaf grows, it comes out curled up like a snail or the head of a violin, then slowly unrolls.

💡 Giant ferns

Some ferns are tiny, and some are real trees that look like palms, growing in rainforests and reaching more than 20 meters tall.

🎯 From long ago

Millions of years ago giant ferns covered the Earth in huge forests. When they died and were buried, over a very long time they turned into the coal we dig up today.