An entertaining and informative look at why ferns and their relatives are unique among plants. Ferns live in habitats from the tropics to the polar latitudes, and unlike seed plants, which endow each seed with the resources to help their offspring, ferns reproduce by minute spores. There are floating ferns, ferns which climb or live on trees and ferns which are trees. There are poisonous ferns, iridescent ferns and resurrection ferns which survive desert heat and drought. The relationship of ferns and people are equally varied. Moran sheds light on Robinson Crusoe's ferns, the role of ferns in movies and how ferns get their names.
Robbin C. Moran is curator of ferns at the New York Botanical Garden. He is the author or coauthor of many papers and four books about ferns, including Fern Grower's Manual, Revised and Expanded Edition, published by Timber Press.