After weaning, groups of rats were fed a semi-purified diet containing fiddlehead greens (the unfuried frond of the ostrich fern Matteuccia struthiopteris), mature bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum), or cycad meal (Cycas circinalis), or this diet plus aflatoxin B1. The groups fed 1-10% fiddlehead greens for 70-73 weeks developed no tumors, whereas those fed mature bracken fern for 67 weeks deve...

In the early 2000s, homeowners in Washington, DC’s leafy Spring Valley neighborhood received some unwelcome news. The Army Corps of Engineers had discovered that the soil on 177 of the Spring Valley properties contained unsafe levels of arsenic, a remnant of World War I-era weapons testing in the area (1). On highly contaminated properties, the Corps dug up yards and hauled soil away. On proper...

Turbinaria conoides (J. Agardh) Kutzing ,(Phaeophyceae) a marine seaweed, and Marsilea quadrifolia Linn. (Marsileaceae) an aquatic fern, were tested for activity against Tobacco necrotic virus (TNV) and bacteria (antimicrobial). Local lesion method was adopted and half leaf comparisons were made in cotyledonary leaves of Cyamopsis tetragonoloba Taub.(Linn.). Extracts of the experimental plants ...

Acrostichum is considered today an opportunistic fern in disturbed areas, which indicates the first stages of colonisation of such zones. However, in the fossil record, Acrostichum appears related to fluvio-lacustrine environments, freshwater marshes and mangrove deposits. We report here for first time fossil evidence of Acrostichum that reveals a pioneering behaviour of this fern in the coloni...

Motivated by studies suggesting that the stomata of ferns and lycophytes do not conform to the standard active abscisic acid (ABA) -mediated stomatal control model, we examined stomatal behavior in a conifer species (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) that is phylogenetically midway between the fern and angiosperm clades. Similar to ferns, daytime stomatal closure in response to moderate water stres...

In forests where the overstorey canopy has been disturbed by timber harvest or other means, evapotranspiration (ET) understorey may be main flux of water back to atmosphere. However, little research apportioned directly measuring use, and technology do so is thus limited. Here, we used a portable chamber quickly measure ET from soil vegetation enclosed chamber. This method was in third-growth c...

A Ferns, which are usually colonizing different environments and their roots frequently present mycorrhization, have two adult stages in their life cycle, the sporophytic and the gametophytic phase. This paper describes the experimental mycorrhizal association between Pteris vittata leptosporangiate fern and a strain of Glomus intraradices during the life cycle of the fern, from spore germinati...

Forest degradation has been most frequently defined as an anthropogenic reduction in biomass compared with reference extant forests. However, so-defined “degraded forests” may widely vary terms of recoverability. A prolonged loss recoverability, commonly described a resilience, poses true threat to global environments. In Bornean logged-over forests, dense thickets ferns and vines have observed...

Due to its phenomenal growth requiring neither nitrogen fertilizer nor arable land and its biomass composition, the mosquito fern Azolla is a candidate crop to yield food, fuels and chemicals sustainably. To advance Azolla domestication, we research its dissemination, storage and transcriptome. Methods for dissemination, cross-fertilization and cryopreservation of the symbiosis Azolla filiculoi...

MatK, the only maturase gene in the land plant plastid genome, is a very popular phylogenetic marker that has been extensively applied in reconstructing angiosperm phylogeny. However, the use of matK in fern phylogeny is largely unknown, due to difficulties with amplification: ferns have lost the flanking trnK exons, typically the region used for designing stable priming sites. We developed pri...