54 Nebraskaland • June 2021
Nebraska's
Fascinating Ferns
By Gerry Steinauer, Botanist
pore-producing ferns are ancient
plants, fi rst appearing in fossil
records about 360 million years
ago, a time when amphibians
were venturing out of the oceans to
become the fi rst land vertebrates. For
tens of millions of years thereafter, the
climate was extremely hot and humid
and ferns fl ourished in the Earth's
expansive swamps, some towering to
tree height.
Although the fl owering and
seed-producing angiosperms, such
as deciduous trees, grasses and
wildfl owers, eventually came to
dominate the Earth's fl ora, ferns
continued to fi ll vital ecological
roles. Sixty-six million years ago, for
instance, when a massive asteroid
slammed into Earth causing a giant
explosion, ravaging fi res and general
cataclysm, as well as extinction of
the dinosaurs and three-quarters of
all other life, ferns, spreading from
refuges via their wind-blown spores,
were the fi rst plants to recolonize the
barren land and begin Earth's healing.
S
Mackay's brittle fern growing on the cool, shaded sandstone wall of Indian Cave at Indian Cave State Park.
