In the natural world, spring is a great unfolding. Tender buds split their seams like over-laden luggage, laying out their trousseau of leaves and blossoms to freshen in the sun. Pupate insects unpack legs and lacey wings like alien landers dropped in from somewhere beyond our ken.  And everywhere trap doors fly open from the vast underground empire of roots and rhizomes to launch green armies of chlorophyll across the dead landscape to join forces with their old ally, the sun.

Few living things unfold into existence with the elegance and grace of the fern. It may just be that practice makes perfect, since ferns have been unfurling themselves in spring for hundreds of millions of years. Along with their less stately clubmoss cousins, ferns were among the first vascular plants with the capacity to circulate water and nutrients throughout their systems, unlocking new possibilities for photosynthesis through both increased size and more elaborate architecture.

Consider the fern’s place in the line-up of evolution’s great parade. First came all the single-celled microscopic pioneers with alga, pondscums, seaweeds and kelps marching behind. From this fertile stew, molds, yeasts, and fungi flung or floated spores across the dividing strand of water and land, giving solid footing to subsequent spore spawners, including mosses and liverworts. With the its innovative vascular system, in time the fern literally rose above the rhizome rat race below to cast its spores a little farther afield.