I’ve recently started an online course about ferns. The first week focuses on the variety of fern species. I didn’t know that you could tell them apart by looking at the number of divisions on the frond. You can see examples in the photographs below. They all look quite different. I took the pictures on Sunday at a botanical garden, so at least two of plants shown are from outside the UK.

The botanical terms for these different forms are undivided, pinnate, bipinnate, and tripinnate. Some fern fronds look like a single leaf, rather like a tongue. These are the undivided ones.

I’ve found it really helpful to know these distinctions. Before, I could walk past a mass of ferns and assume they were all the same. Now, by looking carefully as I go, I can spot whether an area is 90% one species and 10% another.

I’ve fallen into the habit of doing this quite a lot. It feels like an extension of my work as a proofreader, where I read through a document with my eyes peeled for potential problems.

It’s awesome to think that ferns were around in the time of the dinosaurs. In fact, they were part of the vegetable matter that eventually became coal.