Fern Surgery

by Carly Brown

The hand saw sits on the disinfected countertop. Fresh fern-appropriate soil waits in a bucket next to my workstation.  I wheel the ferns in on their ‘gurney’, a garden cart that I pull through the greenhouse to the office. I pass by the succulents, the lipstick tree, and finally the cacti. I am wheeling the ferns in for surgery.

As a greenhouse student employee I work in House 2 amongst the pitcher plants, orchids, and ferns. Once a week I scout the area for greenhouse pests. My hand lens is more or less permanently pressed to my right eye as I search for spider mites, thrips, and aphids (more on that in another post).  Today, however, is fern bisection and transplant day. I have transplanted before, but I have never cut plant clusters into pieces to put a smaller individual back into the original pot. The ferns have not only outgrown their pots, but will soon outgrow their area in the greenhouse if they are not cut back.

Removing the large leather fern from its pot is not a task for the weak. Its deep green, shiny, waxy-looking fronds rise up above my head as it sits on the counter. The pot is dense with secret underground growth. Using all of my strength, I flip the pot upside down and rap it against the edge of the counter until the fern slides out of the pot. Catching it in my hands, I flip the fern right side up. Intricate roots and underground rhizomes support its structure enough that it retains the pot shape. The rhizome on a fern is comparable to the stem on a flowering plant. Though it is below the soil it gives the plant a sturdy structure, much like our legs.

I grab my surgical tool: the saw. The goal is to divide this fern into four equal sections. I start the cut, putting all of my muscle into it, but the saw does not make progress. I move the saw back and fourth, but it does not go deeper into the soil. Is this possible? Am I trying to saw through a piece of metal that I did not see? My muscles strain as I push and pull – back, forth, down – until I finally feel the saw going deeper into the soil. After the saw makes it halfway, something gives. I have made it through the hard, almost woody, rhizomes of the fern, and can now detangle the more delicate roots.

Pulling apart the fern base, I am mesmerized by the beauty in the mess of rhizome structures weaving in and out of each other. I have admired ferns in the forests and fields, and have recently tried delicious fiddleheads smothered in butter.  Despite my above-ground admiration, I have never known what goes on in the life of a fern below the cover of soil.  After making a second bisection I place one section of the fern in its old pot and fill it with new soil. This new soil hides the fern’s secret – its solid, intricate, rhizomatous base. After returning the leather fern to House 2, I drench the dry soil with water to jumpstart the growth that will eventually reveal the secret to another naïve student employee on transplant day.