Saint Dale's Blog

A re you ready to grow your own tree fern? I will be growing a Coin Spotted Tree Fern ( Cyathea cooperi ) as it is native and well adapted to the wet tropics.  An uncoiling tree fern frond. Taken on 22/3/18 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Tree_fern_frond_at_Akatarawa.jpg  Viewed on 22/3/18 Spore Scattered on a sheet of paper. http://cabinetofcuriosities-greenfingers.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/fern-spore-prints.htm   Viewed on 22/3/18 Collecting Spores The easiest way to collect spores is to take a piece of mature frond, with visible sporangia on its underside, and place it on a piece of paper. The spores will be shed onto the paper in a black, brown and yellow powder (Harvey 1993) as the sporangia dry. I would not recommend storing these spores because Cyathea spores can lose their viability after just a few weeks, even when stored in the best conditions (Simabukuro et al. 1998).   Sowing Method Two good mediums to us...

I suspect that by now most of you will have purchased your very own tree fern and are falling madly in love with it.   Of course, if you’re a university student like I am, you will know that money doesn’t grow on tree ferns. If you want to collect spores and grow your own for free, then you need to understand the life cycle of a tree fern. A. Mature Sporophyte producing spores from its Sporangia B. Mature Gametophyte C. Young Sporophyte https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/20219695479/ viewed on 15/3/2018 Before we get into the juicy details of tree fern reproduction, there are some terms we need to understand.   A sperm and an egg are called "haploids" because they each contain only one set of unpaired chromosome. Once the two merge to become a zygote, it is called a diploid; it contains two sets of chromosomes (Campbell et al., 2008).   The terms “haploid" and "diploid” are important, so take a moment to let their roots establi...