Growing excitement for the Rewilding Centre’s grounds
With the development of the Rewilding Centre at Dundreggan, we have planned the landscaping of the grounds around the centre so that it can showcase some of the diversity of the Scottish Highlands’ native plants. On the long list of plants to grow are ragged robin, red campion, wood anemone, violets, tormentil, and several species of fern. Growing something new on the nursery is always exciting - and, until this year, we had never grown ferns before.
Ferns are one of the oldest forms of plant life on our planet. While most of the current species have been around for about 150 million years, the first ferns appeared 360 million years ago - that’s nearly 100 million years before the first dinosaur.
Although we have always shared planet earth with these fascinating plants, it took a very long time for us to uncover their secrets. In fact, the fern's reproductive cycle was so mysterious that until the 19th century it was thought they reproduced through invisible seeds. This belief led to ferns being associated with the power of invisibility in folklore throughout Europe. Even Shakespeare was in on it. In Henry IV, Gladshill, a scheming highwayman, tries to reassure his accomplice by saying ‘we have the receipt of fern seed; we walk invisible’.
The truth about ferns is every bit as amazing as the myths that surround them. Today we know that ferns do not produce secret midnight flowers or invisible seeds, but reproduce through infinitely small spores. These dust-like spores are produced in huge quantities on the underside of the fern fronds. Although most spores land within a few metres of the parent plant, they can travel great distances when caught on the wind and can even make it into the jetstream.
Ferns are found in almost every environment, but they are most abundant as an understorey plant in rainforests, including Scotland’s pinewoods. They have unique pigments within their cells that are specially adapted to photosynthesise in the low-light levels of a forest floor. Many ferns are ancient woodland indicators, giving us clues to where our oldest and most diverse forests still thrive, which is why we see an abundance of ferns in the Caledonian forest.
At the beginning of the year, our Nursery Manager Jill Hodge set out to collect spores from the woodlands at Dundreggan. She returned (fully visible!) with spores from several different species including lady fern, so named for its elegance and beauty, and scaly male fern, an ancient woodland indicator. Spores were sown on compost in trays with lids on them to prevent drying out, and kept on the windowsill for around ten months.
The thing about growing ferns is they don’t grow like other plants. The spores that the adults release do not immediately produce baby ferns, as the seed from a flowering plant would. Instead when the spores land in a suitably damp spot they grow into what looks like a flat, small, green scale. This is in fact what gives rise to the reproductive parts of the plant, which will then produce what we would recognise as a baby fern. This is incredible when you think about it, because the reproductive stage of the plant is an entirely separate structure to the parent plant. The next time you see ferns on your walks in nature, take a moment to ponder their amazing life-cycle.
Over the last two years, we have grown more than 1,200 ferns. The ferns are soon to be planted in the grounds of the Rewilding Centre, together with the other ground flora and a selection of trees - rowan, silver birch and wild cherry, from the 126,000 saplings that that the nursery has grown so far this year.
If you want to see these fascinating living fossils in person, then come and visit us when we open in the spring next year.
Dundreggan tree nursery is kindly funded by Arcadia Trust and Brown Forbes Memorial Fund.