# Easy fern from spores



## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

About 3 weeks ago I mentioned losing a little terrarium fern, _Quercifilix zeylanica_, and that I would try growing the spores that were left on dead fronds.

It's working.

Here are the containers and dried fronds on 11/13/09. These fronds just were left standing on dead plants since August, when they were killed by hot dry weather, until I finally cleaned out that terrarium in mid-November. For some reason they never made it into any pictures when they were alive.

You can see the spore packets rubbed off on paper are huge- the dried frond in the close-up is over an inch long. The spores stayed in these seed-like packets instead of coming apart into dust, so I just left them that way.




















I planted them on Black Gold "Cocoblend" potting soil, screened through a kitchen sieve. I didn't "sterilize" the soil, but the bag was pretty new and was probably pasteurized at the factory. I washed my hands, rubbed the spore packets off the frond, sprinkled them lightly over the soil, and misted them a little bit. After sealing the containers I put them in the back of a terrarium where they would get bright but not direct light.

I ignored them for about 3 weeks because nothing ever grows when I watch it every day. Here's what I found just now:




























You can (sort of) see that the prothalli are growing in tight little clusters from each spot where a spore packet fell. Next time I'll try crushing them to see if they won't spread out a little more evenly. 

Temperature where these is just room temp, ranging from about 60°F at night to low-mid 70s days.

I just misted them lightly again to give the sperm some swimming room, just in case they're already releasing any. I'll update when anything new happens, but it might be a while before I see gametophyte fronds. I'm really hoping to see some variation when they mature, apparently wild types come in all kinds of shapes.

Vincent


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## candm519 (Oct 15, 2006)

Thank you for this post, Vincent. Keep us updated.
Spores make for such a cool reproductive system!


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

I agree Anne, they're interesting and actually easier than seeds in ways, because you can just seal them up and ignore them for much longer. You can also store most fern and moss starts for a long time in 'suspended animation' when they get a little bigger than this, then grow them out as needed.

I wanted to have a forum thread to make it easier to track time, because I've never been good at that.



dirtmonkey said:


> I'll update when anything new happens, but it might be a while before I see gametophyte fronds.


I meant that it might be a while before I see _sporophyte_ fronds, the tiny things up there are the gametophytes. I was writing way past bed time :-/


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

Just a progress report; they're still looking good. Several single sprouts have popped up between the clumped ones now, and they've all grown.



















These just spent over a week in the dark, too. I left for a few days and ended up staying longer than expected. A few of the faster growing plants (mostly rhizomatous gesneriads and Selaginella uncinata) stretched out a little bit but it didn't really hurt anything.

Vincent


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## harrywitmore (Feb 9, 2004)

Nice Vincent. The only ferns I can grow from spores are volunteers. Every other one I have tried never does anything. I'll give your method a try if I can find a good candidate.


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## frogparty (Dec 27, 2007)

get onto growing that awesome neolepisorus ovatus you have Harry


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## harrywitmore (Feb 9, 2004)

I would give it a try but I have never seen a fertile frond.


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## harrywitmore (Feb 9, 2004)

Asiatica still has this fern for sale also.


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## frogparty (Dec 27, 2007)

thanks! sorry for the hijackng


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## gold3nku5h (Jul 24, 2008)

Thats awesome, we just did that in one of my horticulture classes, im trying to get a macrophyllum microphyllum or something like that to get going. Im lazy so the spores are sitting in a little camera film canister frozen in my car  trip back forgot to take them out.


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

Long delayed update: I haven't been living in a good place for frogs without too much equipment (uncontrollable high and low temperatures), so it's been a while since logging in here.

I thought I lost these ferns in a move, I hadn't seen them for a long time. Very weirdly, I was thinking about them and even looked around a little a few days ago, and didn't find them.
This morning, this was sitting at the bottom of a stairway. The cats read my mind or something, found them (one of them anyway, there's another container somewhere), carried it from wherever it was, and helpfully pushed it down the stairwell where I'd find it. I just stared at it, not believing my eyes for a while :-|
Obviously it's a little roughed up, but there's a good 1" by 3/4" section in decent shape.

It wasn't intentional, but this also illustrates what other ferns have done for me in the past- they went into some kind of near stasis until I got around to them again. These have been sitting for about 2 years with no attention at all. In that time, they put up the first tiny true fronds and just waited.

I believe that using well-aged, non-sterile mix helps out here too, as any molds or bacteria that enter during the wait are outcompeted or just become part of the soil balance, instead of growing out of control and killing the ferns. Sometimes tiny mosses show up, but they usually won't cause problems, and planting the ferns thickly usually prevents them from growing. There isn't a speck of 'bad' stuff growing in these, despite having been opened early on for the pictures.



















I'll be pricking them out with a toothpick and planting in clear deli container terrariums soon, where they can start growing out into real baby ferns.

Vincent


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

Updating a very old thread to keep a hard to believe story all in one place.

I killed these fernlets, never having gotten around to potting them up, and started a new batch. *Or so I thought*. The new ones ended up dying out, there was mold in the containers and they were all rotted. BUT- one of the original containers, which I thought all dead, came back to life! At least partly, anyway. the other container is still all dead and brown. I hadn't gotten to tossing these out, again, and glad I didn't. 

These tiny little green things have been sitting in this ziploc cup, doing almost nothing at all but surviving, for just over three years. If I had checked moisture at least every 6 months, they would probably have all been alive still.

With all that has been going on in life, if I had grown them out, they would be as long gone as almost all of my other plants. But they're still here.

Not pretty, but pretty cool, huh?


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## frogparty (Dec 27, 2007)

great!!! Its a plant miracle


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## candm519 (Oct 15, 2006)

A fine welcome-'home' gift from your faithful plants!


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## Judy S (Aug 29, 2010)

collecting sori and propagating ferns is such good fun...but the most difficult part is the dividing and potting up...anyone have any useful tips? A friend of mine is in the local fern society, and he has well over 100 ferns in his garden and has always been generous with letting some of us collect sori...so I'd love to get past that tadpole/frog stage with the ferns.


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

Whenever I've done it before, I just used toothpicks or those sharpened bamboo food skewers, same as with gesneriad or begonia seedlings. the point is used for everything from teasing them apart to poking the roots into new soil mix. Also as with tiny seedlings, I don't try to be perfect about getting every single one separated- they often get planted in small groups and do fine. They can be pulled apart more when bigger if needed. I water them in with a hand mister.

Vincent


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## Judy S (Aug 29, 2010)

I've done what you suggest, but the failure rate is still high...what do you use for the transition "soil?" When I first sow the spores, it is into those plastic salad things you get at a supermarket...on milled spag. moss. I try to carefully transplant them...but they just sort of die off....


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

Well, it's been a while again... Sorry Judy. I also use sphagnum, milled, but usually make it 'dirty' with a little screened compost or old potting soil. Sometimes I mix in a pinch of ground eggshells. What I used today was about 1/2 & 1/2 milled sphagnum and a seed starting mix that's mostly peat, perlite, and fine composted bark; I was too lazy to go out to the compost bin in the dark in a rainstorm and then screen and microwave the compost tonight.

I was thinking I might run this little 'experiment' for 5 years, but I looked at them today and couldn't stand it any more. They've been in the same little container with very, very little care or attention for 52.5 months! I've held baby ferns in closed containers for a long time before, but this might be a record for me. Definitely the longest I've ever documented.

Here are the little Tectaria zeilanica (I still like the old name better) tonight. I forgot to get a picture until after I started pulling them apart. Even the fine hairy invading moss was almost all browned out after this long, the prothallia were almost gone, and I had lost more of the sporophyte fernlets.








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they had some good wiry roots, so I pulled them apart into small clumps and put them in 2" pots (and a leftover clump back in the old container).








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Wish them luck.

Vincent


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## stu&shaz (Nov 19, 2009)

Judy S said:


> I've done what you suggest, but the failure rate is still high...what do you use for the transition "soil?" When I first sow the spores, it is into those plastic salad things you get at a supermarket...on milled spag. moss. I try to carefully transplant them...but they just sort of die off....


Judy i'm no plant expert,but I seem to be able to move them fairly easily,I'm just wondering if it's better to let them get to a fair size before moving. We have also grown the epiweb moss mix ,which contains a lot of fern spore ,it seems. I just use sterilized ecoearth in a propagator spread the moss mix on top keep damp and under goodish light. We can then transplant sections straight into viv. I normally put this straight on to oak branches that are good and moist. Not having too much substrate seems to keep the majority that take from getting too big,but I'd like another year to really confirm that statement.But so far so good for some early movers that are still going around a year on after the move stage

apologies for the hijack,interesting thread though,quite amazing actually!

Stu


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## dirtmonkey (Feb 10, 2007)

Doesn't seem like a hijack to me at all. I was trying to think of anything else on that, and I couldn't come up with helpful ideas. Even particular species or temperate/tropical differences haven't seemed to affect them very much either way in the early stages, for me.

When I kill them during this transition, it's almost always becayse I let them dry out too much from plain old neglect on my part (Not saying that's Judy's problem, just that it has been mine!)


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## hydrophyte (Jun 5, 2009)

That's cool. Thanks for posting this.


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## stu&shaz (Nov 19, 2009)

dirtmonkey said:


> Doesn't seem like a hijack to me at all. I was trying to think of anything else on that, and I couldn't come up with helpful ideas. Even particular species or temperate/tropical differences haven't seemed to affect them very much either way in the early stages, for me.
> 
> When I kill them during this transition, it's almost always becayse I let them dry out too much from plain old neglect on my part (Not saying that's Judy's problem, just that it has been mine!)


Thanks for the understanding an I also think you are spot on one has to be very disciplined on moisture just after a move. As a side note we have also managed some button fern from spore pinned straight on to cork as young plants,showing some roots. The cork was over that initial dry stage when a viv is first set up,but sure twice a day spot misting was probably very important. 

Again slightly left field and a stolen idea,which i've not yet tried myself . I wonder if one could harvest the dry spore,not the "capsules" pop them in a hand mister ,add water and simply spray a viv. Sure take would be very random,but one might just some new plants if they fall where the like the conditions. Sure very random,but I would imagine a very natural affect. I shall try this soon and at some stage report back,I have some polypodium vulgare spore sat waiting.

As above I'm no plant expert,but we got some experience working in a specialist fern nursery here in blighty,which had set me thinking when we started with our darts on possible ways to cultivate some cheep plants,although we didn't do any propagating ha ha the seeds were sown

This is some of the epiwebmossmix growing in situ


and not long after some was moved to viv



finally a transplant a good while on in a FTS. The ferns growing on the oak are all epiweb,sure some die off,but a few taking is all one needs










best

Stu


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## Judy S (Aug 29, 2010)

I have raised the sporlings in the clear plastic salad containers from supermarkets...they work great...its just that stage where you have to sacrifice the little ones--I usually just use tiny scissors and cut them off...and keep them under growlights...it's the next transition to peatpots where I lose them...I always use the sterile milled spagnum to avoid damping off...so that is not an issue....but amusingly enough, there must be spores floating in the air even now, that I get fern growth in the strangest places...what a fascinating plant...


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## Jeremy M (Oct 19, 2012)

stu&shaz said:


> This is some of the epiwebmossmix growing in situ


So _you're_ the scoundrel whose pictures of trays full of epiweb ferns I've been stalking across google and photobucket for the past year (literally, I've got your photobucket bookmarked and check it weekly)... needless to say, I'm super psyched to see an update of how those little fernlets grew out! I have yet to see any ferns pop out of my epiweb mix- actually, I've only had one species of moss grow from it, maybe a few strands of a second. But I've only had it for a few months and have only tried it in a couple different experimental containers, and not in a proper vivarium environment. Hopefully when I apply some there I'll have better luck.

I also have dried out fronds of a few species lying around that I think I'll go back and try to germinate following the method used in this thread. I've only tried this once before when I was about twelve, and the attempt consisted of rubbing one of those cheap expanding-peat-packet seed-sprouters against the dry spores on the fern's leaf. Nothing happened, but man, I watched those things super eagerly for weeks, just waiting for a sign of life...

Hope all is going well with those seedlings. Don't forget to water them.


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## Judy S (Aug 29, 2010)

If you collect fronds that show sori...you can just lay the frond on sterile milled spagnum moss in what amounts to a small terrarium -- like the salad containers-- make sure the moss is hydrdrated but not sopping wet---plunk a tiny amount of clean pebbles on top to hold the frond in contact with the "soil". Eventually there will be growth...if kept in light and some warmth... pretty easy method...and I have fronds from a few years ago in paper..kept dry and in the dark..even they would probably grow....


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