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Re: Growing ferns from spores

In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.970404160801.15255E-100000@kira>, Amy Knutson
<aknutson@peak.org> writes
>Just curious and ignorant:
>What if you cut off a branch of a mother plant (assuming it's the 
>female form I suppose) with ripe seed and placed it on moist sterile 
>soil, covered it with plastic, and kept it similar conditions as the 
>spores would experience in the forest? Would the spores germinate?
>By the way, how do you tell a male fern from a female if you don't 
>already know which kind you have (assuming a friend gave you some off of 
>their wooded property)?
>-Amy K.
That's the thing about ferns: they're are all neuter. The spores give
rise to the sexual stages of the lifecycle, little flat green ribbony
things that look like liverworts; these then sexually reproduce to
produce the neuters that you want to grow. 

Sexual reproduction involves the spermatozoa swimming off to find an
egg, one reason for the importance of moisture at this stage.

Therefore, any fern spores would do to raise new plants, but even in
ideal circumstance it would take weeks to months before identifiable
fern plumes start to rear their heads. The medium you grow them in would
need to be kept moist (and the atmosphere saturated) and sterile. It
would need a certain amount of light for the sexual ribbons to grow.

If you can provide these conditions, then it would be worth a go with
fresh, ripe spores.

Chiltern Seeds in the UK offers spores of a whole variety of ferns: has
anyone had any experience of germinating commercial ones? I'd have
thought the viability might go off quite quickly.
-- 
Alison Brooks  

O-
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