
Survivors impress me. They overcome, adapt, persevere. They can be relied upon. They have your back. And this brings us to ferns, quietly unfurling their delicate fronds in pretty much the same way for 180 million years. I don’t know about you, but I find that kind of incredible. In a world where everything seems to change willy-nilly, the fern achieves nothing more than stasis, and does so without gaudy flowers or shy seeds. I normally avoid things that use spores to reproduce because I find spores to be somehow alien and disturbing; but in this case, I’ll give ferns a pass. After all, they seem to have discovered the secret to longevity, down on the damp earth, fiddleheads coiled amidst the sunlight.