On the Spring Equinox, Pip Squire considers the age-old association between ferns and the idea of rebirth.
Like the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre — celebrated today on Ostara, the Spring Equinox — ferns have long been associated with ideas of fertility and rebirth. This is partially down to their invisible and mysterious reproductive process: historically misunderstood, and subject to much mythologising and conjecture. Unusual amongst plants, modern botanical study has allowed us to understand that ferns reproduce via spore, rather than seed.
Deciduous ferns that died back last year, like royal ferns and bracken, are now re-emerging, elegantly unfurling new fronds known as fiddleheads. Even the evergreens, like spleenworts and polypodies, are renewed and reborn around this festival of new life, putting out fresh leaves to replace those that saw them through the winter.
Male fern fiddleheads. Photo: Nick Squire
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As told to the editor.
An artist based in Devon and Cornwall, Pip Squire is a colour enthusiast, and a lover of the stories contained in plants, people and animals.