Fronds. Forest dwellers. Spores. Houseplants. Gametophytes? We’ve got ferns. The charming and hilarious professor, pteridologist and author of “Ferns: Lessons in Survival from Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants,” Dr. Fay-Wei Li, tells me all aboutwhat makes ferns such oddities in the plant world, fern evolution, why they have beef with flowering plants, tips for growing your own fern gully, whether they have roots or rhyzomes or friends, and how ferns could help cool down a warming planet or grow better crops. This episode is, in Fay-Wei’s words, “ferntastic.”

Visit Dr. Li’s lab website and follow him on Google Scholar

Buy his book, Ferns: Lessons in Survival from Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants, on Bookshop.org or Amazon

A donation went to the ASPT Herbarium Emergency Fund

Full-length (*not* G-rated) Pteridology episode + tons of science links

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Sound editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake Chaffee

Made possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer, Aveline Malek and Erin Talbert

Smologies theme song by Harold Malcolm

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