Watch Ferns Get Freaky | Deep Look

Look at the underside of a fern leaf. Those rows of orange clusters aren’t tiny insects; they’re spores waiting to be catapulted away. Once a spore lands, it grows into a tiny plant, from which fern sperm swim away, searching for an egg to fertilize. Think of that next time you’re hiking in the forest.

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DEEP LOOK is an ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED in San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small.

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Each of the clusters on the fern leaf is called a sorus. Within each sorus are wormlike structures called sporangia, which are filled with spores.

If you look at a sporangium under a microscope, you see it has an outer ring filled with water. When the spores mature and it’s warm outside, that water starts to evaporate. The ring shrinks and bends back, making the sporangium crack open. Then the ring jerks forward, hurling out the spores.

A single fern launches millions of spores. Each one grows into a tiny plant about as big as a pea, known as a gametophyte. But gametophytes aren’t baby ferns. Instead, their job is to make eggs and sperm in specialized organs. When it rains or the environment is moist, that’s when ferns mate: Fern sperm swim away on a film of water to find eggs to fertilize. The fertilized eggs then grow into ferns.

---So, do ferns have seeds?

No, ferns don’t make seeds or flowers.

---+ Find a transcript on KQED Science:

https://www.kqed.org/science/1992380/...

---+ More great Deep Look episodes:

The Secret Lives of Plants playlist:
   • The Secret Lives of Plants | Deep Look  

Busy Bees and Other Pollinators playlist:
   • Busy Bees and Other Pollinators | Dee...  

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