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 ...

• The Australian tree fern (Cyathea cooperi) is a large tropical fern that forms a trunk. In the wild, a mature tree’s medium to dark green fronds can grow 5 to 8 feet long, but the fronds will be ...

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 ...

For sheer pop, indoors or out, staghorn ferns (Platycerium spp) can’t be beat. Once considered difficult to grow in San Diego County, staghorn ferns are now commonly found in nurseries, hanging on ...

American Fern Journal, Vol. 105, No. 2 (April-June 2015), pp. 59-72 (14 pages) The response to the canopy openness of species in tropical forests is a source of niche differentiation. The tree ferns ...

Lightning is often seen as a killer, leaving behind destruction and death of trees — but one tropical species has evolved to use the force of nature to its benefit. The tonka bean tree, scientifically ...

Evolution, Vol. 72, No. 5 (MAY 2018), pp. 1050-1062 (13 pages) Variation in rates of molecular evolution (heterotachy) is a common phenomenon among plants. Although multiple theoretical models have ...

If you want to get a sense of what life was like during the Carboniferous period some 300 million years ago, visit the Kona Cloud Forest above Kailua. The area abounds with ferns that once were ...

I purchased a Japanese fern tree in 2006 and it was beautiful for several years. Leaves have yellowed and fallen off by the thousands. It seemed to do fairly well during the cold spell losing more ...

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 ...