Ferns have a brilliant way of reproducing. They don’t produce seeds like flowering plants, but instead grow a completely new, independent plant called a gametophyte. If you look on the underside of ...

The spores released by the sporophyte – the asexually reproducing form that we commonly recognize as a fern – germinate into either a tiny, heart-shaped, hermaphroditic gametophyte (“hermaphroditic” ...

After the successful development of a new totally independent organism, the other life cycle of the fern, known as ...