University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James Dalling and his colleagues discovered that some tree ferns recycle their dead fronds into roots. The researchers call these ...

• The Australian tree fern (Cyathea cooperi) is a large tropical fern that forms a trunk. In the wild, a mature tree’s medium to dark green fronds can grow 5 to 8 feet long, but the fronds will be ...

Probably the first pioneer plants to arrive in Hawaii were mosses and ferns. Ferns have been around for over 360 million years. Giant tree fern forests were common for millions of years but they gave ...

Ordinarily, once a fern's leaf fronds have died, the plant has no further use for them. Such is not the case with the Cyathea rojasiana fern, though – a scientist has discovered that its dead fronds ...

American Fern Journal, Vol. 105, No. 2 (April-June 2015), pp. 59-72 (14 pages) The response to the canopy openness of species in tropical forests is a source of niche differentiation. The tree ferns ...

Lightning is often seen as a killer, leaving behind destruction and death of trees — but one tropical species has evolved to use the force of nature to its benefit. The tonka bean tree, scientifically ...

Evolution, Vol. 72, No. 5 (MAY 2018), pp. 1050-1062 (13 pages) Variation in rates of molecular evolution (heterotachy) is a common phenomenon among plants. Although multiple theoretical models have ...

Tree ferns have become popular choices for gardeners wanting to add a large, finely textured green presence in their garden. But what if you don't have the space for a 12-foot-tall, wide-arching fern ...

I purchased a Japanese fern tree in 2006 and it was beautiful for several years. Leaves have yellowed and fallen off by the thousands. It seemed to do fairly well during the cold spell losing more ...

Plant biologists report that a species of tree fern found only in Panama reanimates its own dead leaf fronds, converting them into root structures that feed the mother plant. The fern, Cyathea ...