What is on My Baker Fern?

When you receive a bouquet of artfully arranged flowers, your first instinct is probably to put your nose up to the blooms to take in their beautiful fragrance. At that close distance, you might notice small dots on the underside of the baker fern greenery. Some people have mistaken those small dots for insects or the sign of an ill piece of greenery, but they are actually harmless organs that help the plant in reproduction. Baker fern and many other types of ferns rely on these small bumps, which are sometimes called “fruit dots,” to ensure that this primitive type of greenery continues to thrive into the future.

How Do Ferns Reproduce?

If you’ve ever seen a forest floor covered in ferns, you won’t have a hard time believing that ferns are quite talented at reproduction. Not only are ferns one of the most primitive plants, but there are also over 12,000 species of them! Ferns have been able to survive this long because they are able to self-pollinate. They do not rely on animals, bees, wind, or any other external factors to pollinate like some other plants do.

But ferns do not produce any flowers, so where do they keep their seeds? This is where those small dots on the underside of their leaves come in. The scientific name for the bumps is sporangia. The sporangia have caps on top called indusia. Think of them as the capsules that contain the seeds. The indusia will eventually burst open, allowing the seeds to fall to the ground. If the seeds fall on good soil, a different, second-generation fern will begin to grow. These new ferns, called prothalli, contain the male and female sexual organs that will allow more ferns to emerge on small stems called fiddleheads. The ferns that emerge from the fiddleheads will be the next ones to contain the spores. And so the bigenerational lifecycle of ferns continues!

Where did Baker Fern Come From?

That was a very scientific lesson in fern reproduction, but the bottom line is, the spots on the back of the baker fern in your floral arrangement are not harmful to the plant or to the recipient. Their uniform placement is just one hint that these are not the product of a random insect attack, but are intentionally grown by the foliage itself.

Despite these sometimes noticeable spores, baker fern has long been popular in the floral industry. It has a triangle shaped leaf that extends from a thin stem. The greenery is dark and glossy and can be about 6”-20” in length. Baker fern is used in many types of floral designs including everyday arrangements, weddings, and funeral arrangements. It is beloved for it’s hearty and long-lasting quality--it can live for up to 2 weeks when cared for properly. Baker fern is good for creating a draping look around the base of a vase arrangement because the triangular leaves tend to bend backwards a bit, rather than standing straight.

Baker fern is also called Leatherleaf fern for its shiny appearance and heartiness. Its lesser known scientific name is Rumohra adiantiformis. The plant is native to South America, the Caribbean, southern Africa, Western Indian Ocean islands, Papua New Guinea and Australasia. However, the foliage is now a large part of the cut flower industry in southern Florida. From 1983-85, severe freezes killed off wide areas of historic citrus plantations in the region. But the growers decided to make lemons out of lemonade and use the area to start a new crop: ferns for the cut flower industry. The farmers planted many types of ferns, and watched closely to see which would grow the best. The variety they had nicknamed “Baker” was the top performer, and that was the type of fern that they began wholesaling to florists across the country. The name Baker has become synonymous with leather leaf.

So next time you see the small spots of the bottom of the baker fern, you can know that you are actually seeing a small point in time of the lifecycle of these fascinating foliages.

This article was published by Chad Kremp